My Deal Me In deck turned up diamonds this week, which means fairy tales. I’ve fallen behind in reading my Fornightly Fairy Tales from Pook Press, so looked one up and read it.
The Seven Ravens
A Brothers Grimm Tale
Now, since this is a tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, you know it is.
It’s a variation on the Seven Swans story, but much shorter. A little girl’s seven elder brothers are turned into birds, and only she can free them.
I like this version because nobody tells her she can rescue them, she just takes it upon herself to do it.
No handsome princes are involved, either. The “rescue” is pretty lame, but we can fix that by making it better when we retell it, right? Because that’s how fairy tales work.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A sibling comes to another sib’s rescue.
MA
Dan antion
March 4, 2019 at 1:13pm“No handsome princes are involved” I like that. Fairy Tales and children’s books are always improved by the reader.
KatFrench
April 22, 2019 at 2:48pmI’m a bit late on this one, but I love variations on the “Seven Swan Brothers” stories. Somewhere, in some folder on Google Drive, I have a space opera retelling of this tale where the “little sister” is a botanist crew member of a space research mission, whose team mates are transformed by their XO into large aquatic avians (instead of the local humanoids they were SUPPOSED to transform into) to keep them distracted while she steals a valuable resource from the planet. Our botanist has to figure out how to safely turn them back, while dodging the superstitious, less technologically-advanced locals who think she’s a witch and get back to the ship before the XO abandons them there. 🙂
Marian Allen
April 22, 2019 at 3:10pmOMG, TAKE MY MONEY!!!