Briarbook Lane
  • Home
  • Mary Bio
  • Mary's Blog
  • Enchanted Garden
    • Book Club
  • Liz Bio
  • Liz's Blog
    • Chronicling
  • Contact
  • For Writers

Enchanted Garden

Both sisters read and review the same book, a fairy tale retelling.

Next Quarter's Book Pick

10/1/2020

0 Comments

 

Our Fairy-Tale Book Club Pick for December 2020 is:

Book Cover of Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson. A young woman's hennaed hands hold a single pink blossom.

Toads and Diamonds
by
​Heather Tomlinson

Join us in reading this fairy-tale retelling over then next few months. In December, Mary and Elizabeth will each post a review of this novel. Then, they will discuss the book and share their discussion. You can join the discussion as you read by joining our Facebook group!

For more information on the fairy tale that inspires this book, keep reading below.

Diamonds & Toads

"Toads and Diamonds" or "Diamonds and Toads" is a fairy tale written by Charles Perrault and first published under the title "The Fairies" in 1697. It is a tale fitting into type 480 of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) index: the kind and unkind girls. Perrault's tale was inspired by a French folk story; he gathered and wrote literary adaptations of stories from the French oral tradition in much the way that the Brothers Grimm gathered Germanic tales.

You can find a full English translation of the original Perrault tale here. SurLaLune (an excellent fairy tales blog) shared an introduction to stories of the ATU-480 type here.

This tale plays out a number of common fairy tale tropes that will likely be familiar to you, even if the story itself if new to you. We have a fairy in disguise who sets up a test to determine the worthiness of the characters who interact with her, with a reward for the 'kind' girl and a punishment for the 'unkind' girl. We have a Cinderella-esque situation with the 'good' sister being mistreated by her mother, who strongly favors the spoiled 'bad' sister. In the original French tale that inspired Perrault, the mother and sister of our 'kind girl' protagonist were of the evil-step variety; he changed them to blood family in order to better distinguish the tale from that of Cinderella.

If you really enjoy Toads and Diamonds and want to explore another retelling of this tale, you can also check out Gail Carson Levine's novella The Fairy's Mistake (the first story in her set of Princess Tales). It's a short, quick read with a humorous twist on the tale.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Authors

    Sisters and writers both. Love fairy tales.

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020

    Categories

    All
    Book Club
    Social Media

    RSS Feed

    Book Club Info
    Last quarter book club pick:
    Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson
    Mary's Review​
    Elizabeth's Review
    Discussion
    March's book:
    Gingerbread​ by Helen Oyeyemi
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Mary Bio
  • Mary's Blog
  • Enchanted Garden
    • Book Club
  • Liz Bio
  • Liz's Blog
    • Chronicling
  • Contact
  • For Writers