Bewitched retellings of classic fairy-tales with brave and resilient heroines.

WINNER: Book of the Year 2018 (CBI Awards)
WINNER: YA Book of the Year 2017 (Irish Book Awards)
WINNER: Reader's Choice Award for YA Fiction 2017 (Irish Times Ticket Awards)

A multi-award winning collection of twelve dark, feminist retellings of traditional fairytales from one of Ireland's leading writers for young people. In the tradition of Angela Carter, stories such as Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin are given a witchy makeover. Intricately illustrated with black and white line drawings.

'Exquisitely written and powerful - I'm enchanted by it.' - Marian Keyes

'Deirdre Sullivan's writing is beguiling, bewitching and poetic. Her prose is almost dreamlike, reminiscent of Angela Carter.' - Juno Dawson, author of The Gender Games

'Sullivan's prose is delicate and masterful.' - Dave Rudden, author of Knights of the Borrowed Dark

'Witchy, eerie and beautiful. These thirteen fairytale retellings already feel like feminist classics.' - Claire Hennessy, author of Like Other Girls

Dark, feminist retellings of traditional fairytales for a teen audience - not for the faint-hearted

`Exquisitely written and powerful... I'm enchanted by it' - Marian Keyes `Deirdre Sullivan's writing is beguiling, bewitching and poetic. Her prose is almost dreamlike, reminiscent of Angela Carter.' - Juno Dawson, award-winning author `This absolutely beautifully collection of retold fairy tales is as wonderful to read as it is to look at. Featuring lovely, feminist angles on your favourite fairy tales and beautiful full spread illustrations, it deserves a space on your shelf stat.' - Buzzfeed `A tapestry of retellings and reimaginings, some told in beguiling second person, that foreground women - their desires, powers, fearsomeness and vulnerability ... enriched by Vaughan's sharp, intricate, Beardsleyesque illustrations' - The Guardian

About the Author

Deirdre Sullivan is from Galway and is now living in Dublin, where she works as a teacher.

Her hugely acclaimed Tangleweed and Brine, a collection of feminist retellings of classic fairytales, won the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year Award in 2018, Young Adult Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2017, and the Irish Times Ticket Reader's Choice Award for YA Fiction.

Her novel Needlework won the Honour Award for Fiction at the Children's Books Ireland Awards in 2017.

Sullivan's Primrose Leary trilogy was also widely praised; two of the Prim books were shortlisted for the Children's Books Ireland Awards; and the final one, Primperfect, was the first ever YA book to be shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature.

Reviews

'An absolute stunner of a book.'

-- Claire Hennessey * The Irish Times *

A tapestry of retellings and reimaginings, some told in beguiling second person, that foreground women - their desires, powers, fearsomeness and vulnerability ... enriched by Vaughan's sharp, intricate, Beardsleyesque illustrations.

-- Imogen Russell Williams * The Guardian *

This absolutely beautifully collection of retold fairy tales is as wonderful to read as it is to look at. Featuring lovely, feminist angles on your favourite fairy tales and beautiful full spread illustrations, it deserves a space on your shelf stat.

* Buzzfeed *

Sullivan muddies the black-and-white narratives, not only with murky endings, but with dark, dangerous, imperfect and even unhinged heroines. In doing so, she makes her fairy tales richer and more fertile, but also more adult... Her language is heavily perfumed with meaning... with its beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley's for Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, it would make a great gift for a teenager.

-- Hattie Garlick * The Times Literary Supplement *

Vaughan's artwork is captivatingly complex and disturbingly mesmeric, harking back to a previous generation of fairy-tale illustrators while significantly contributing to the synergy between this volume's words and images ... In Sullivan's enthralling renditions the feminine is inseparable from the political and the sexual ... An engrossing and terrifying work.

* Inis Magazine *

These fairy tale retellings are remarkable: they stop you in your tracks. They make you exclaim 'What! What did I just read?' I turned the pages backwards as often as I turned them forwards. The inky woodcut style drawings are an added bonus from Karen Vaughan. They exactly match the text, dark and light, astonishing, flowing.

-- Hilary McKay, novelist * Achuka.co.uk (round-up, best books of 2017) *


Awards
Winner of Teen & Young Adult Book of the Year 2017 (Ireland) and Irish Times Ticket Readers' Choice for Best Young Adult Fiction 2017 (Ireland) and Book of the Year 2018 (Ireland).



Book Information
ISBN 9781912417117
Author Deirdre Sullivan
Format Paperback
Page Count 196
Imprint Little Island
Publisher Little Island
Weight(grams) 350g
Dimensions(mm) 225mm * 145mm * 8mm