Reddit reviews Zel

Can you even have a complete discussion of modern fairy tales without mentioning names like Gregory Maguire (who's tackled adult remakes of The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, and Snow White) and Donna Jo Napoli (MG/YA historical versions of Cinderella, Rapunzel, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc) and Shannon Hale?

For the record, I love fairy tale retellings. You think you know where the story is going, and then everything changes. Alternatively, the author has to execute an awful lot of creativity to justify plot events that seemed so obvious as metaphors/logical reactions years and years ago, but need different context to be understood in a modern context.

In undergrad, I had a professor who kept going on and on about how Little Red Riding Hood was specifically used in the French court to teach young girls about the dangers of sex and relationships and older men without using words that might corrupt them. Not sure how much I buy that argument.

Gregory Maguire's already been covered, so most of these are middle-grade or YA titles.

• Ash is a lesbian version of Cinderella.
  
• The Goose Girl is a retelling of Grimm's version of... The Goose Girl.
  
• Zel is Rapunzel in 16th-century Switzerland.
  
• Breath is the Pied Piper + cystic fibrosis in the Middle Ages.
  
• Bound is a retelling of the original (Chinese) Cinderella story.
  
• The Book of a Thousand Days is Maid Maleen in the Caucasus.
  
• Shadow Spinner is Arabian Nights from a different perspective.