Vanellope: "Yes! What is up with that?"
Disney Princesses: "She is a princess!"
Disney Princesses: "She is a princess!"
-Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
My dear readers,
March is Women's History Month. To celebrate the third month of the year, I would like to recommend to you the following media. Please note the age rating for each medium and beware of some spoilers.
Power to the Princess: 15 Favorite Fairytales Retold with Girl Power by Vita Murrow👸🏻👸🏼👸🏽👸🏾👸🏿
Age Rating: 5+
This children's book contains fifteen princess fairy tales retold by Vita Murrow and illustrated by Julia Bereciartu. Rather than be damsels in distress, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, et al. are mature and diverse women who overcome social issues without any help from princes. This book is perfect for fans of Jim C. Hines’ Princess novels and the fantasy TV series Once Upon a Time.
To be followed this October by its brother anthology High-Five to the Hero: 15 Favorite Fairytales Retold for Real Boys.
Age Rating: 5+
This children's book contains fifteen princess fairy tales retold by Vita Murrow and illustrated by Julia Bereciartu. Rather than be damsels in distress, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, et al. are mature and diverse women who overcome social issues without any help from princes. This book is perfect for fans of Jim C. Hines’ Princess novels and the fantasy TV series Once Upon a Time.
To be followed this October by its brother anthology High-Five to the Hero: 15 Favorite Fairytales Retold for Real Boys.
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| What if princesses didn't always marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after? |
Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: A Modern Retelling of Little Women by Rey Terciero👧🏿👧🏼👧🏽👧🏾
Age Rating: 9+
2018 marked the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's semi-autobiographical classic Little Women. To honour the event, Rey Terciero had written a modern retelling with illustrations by Bre Indigo.
In this very special book, the Marches are reimagined as a biracial family living in present day New York City. As Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy deal with the ups and downs of growing up, the four sisters will each go on a journey to her dream and her identity.
This graphic novel is the This Is Us for modern comics readers.
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| Clockwise from top left: Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth Jo March: "And while the world isn't where it should be, it's on its way... " |
Lynda La Plante's Widows🦹🏼♀️🦹🏼♀️🦹🏻♀️🦹🏿♀️
Age Rating: 15+
Lynda La Plante is a British writer best known for creating Prime Suspect, a police procedural drama in which Dame Helen Mirren starred as Jane Tennison.
Originally, La Plante worked as an actress. However, she was typecast by directors as barmaids and prostitutes due to her appearance. In response, she quitted acting to become a writer. She sent an idea for a TV series to Verity Lambert, a producer at Euston Films. Since Lambert was looking for a female-driven series, she commissioned La Plante to write the episodes.
One day, the former actress read an article about a woman who had been bereft of her husband's death and was prompted by a dire financial situation to try robbing a post office. The widow failed and got arrested as a result. It was that news report that inspired La Plante to make the plot of her show.
To bring her characters to life, La Plante gained insight into the criminal underworld by interviewing prostitutes and prisoners' wives. At the auditions, four unknown actresses were cast as the lead characters. Thus, a twelve-episode crime drama titled Widows was made.
The premise is that three women-Dolly Rawlins (Ann Mitchell), Linda Perelli (Maureen O'Farrell), and Shirley Miller (Fiona Hendley)-lose their robber husbands in a botched hijack. After her husband Harry's funeral, Dolly finds his ledgers. The journals detail all of Harry's heists, including the failed four-person job that has killed him. Even though the police monitor her moves, and two thug brothers want the ledgers, Dolly, nevertheless, recruits Linda, Shirley, and a hooker named Bella O'Reilly (Eva Mottley in series 1; Debby Bishop in series 2) to finish the raid.
Full of action, drama, thrills, and twists, Widows was one of the most-viewed programmes worldwide. In 1995, it was followed by a sequel series titled She
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| From left to right: Linda, Shirley, Bella, and Dolly. Dolly Rawlins: "We do it. We pull the next big one Harry lined up." |
The Olympians Series by George O'Connor🔥🦉🥤🦚🌈⚱️🌾💘🌙
Age Rating: 9+
Since 2010, George O'Connor has been publishing a planned duodecalogy of graphic novels that retell the Greek myths about the twelve Olympians. These books contain stories about heroes, monsters, quests, gods, and, of course, goddesses.
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| From left to right: Hestia, Athena, Hebe, Hera, Iris, Persephone, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Artemis. |
Dumb: Living Without a Voice by Georgia Webber🤫
Age Rating: 17+
This graphic novel reminds readers that men and women should not be judged by what they look like or what they say, but rather by what they do. Artist Georgia Webber gives an artistic take on that moral in her graphic memoir Dumb.
When a throat injury deprived Georgia of her need to speak, her life unravelled. She was prescribed by doctors to stay silent for months. Then she had to find a job that did not require too much talking. Worst of all, she had to sacrifice her favourite hobby of singing. Throughout her ordeal, Georgia was supported by her friends and she wondered what did it mean to have a voice.
Orphan Black🦢🧬🐑
Age Rating: 17+
The recent news reports on designer babies should remind us that science is a double-edged sword. That moral is shown in the Canadian Sci-Fi series Orphan Black.
For five seasons, Tatiana Maslany wowed audiences with her Emmy-winning performances as the Project Leda clones Sarah Manning, Helena, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus et al as they navigate through and fight against the madness that created them.
Welcome to Clone Club, Sestras.
For five seasons, Tatiana Maslany wowed audiences with her Emmy-winning performances as the Project Leda clones Sarah Manning, Helena, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus et al as they navigate through and fight against the madness that created them.
Welcome to Clone Club, Sestras.
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| Clone Club: "Just one. I'm a few. No family too. Who am I?" |
Threads by Torill Kove🧶
Age Rating: All Ages
Torill Kove is the Oscar-winning director of the short films My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, The Danish Poet, and Me and My Moulton. In her latest project Threads, Kove shows that regardless of DNA or adoption, the love between parents and children is boundless.
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn🎪
Age Rating: 17+
Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, and Octavia E. Butler were among many women famous for writing grotesque, shocking, and macabre plots. In 1983, Alfred A. Knopf added Katherine Dunn to that group when it published her bestselling novel Geek Love.
The late author got inspiration for her book when she took her son for a walk at the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon. Dunn observed how genetic engineering resulted in different roses, each with its own sets of colours, shapes, and scents. She joked in an interview that she could have redesigned her son, who refused to spend time with her then, to be more obedient.
The same roses are alluded to in Aloysius and Lil Binewski's plan to breed a freak show to save their struggling circus. Lil ingests various drugs and poisons to conceive her and Al's "perfect" children. Of all the progeny, only five survive the mad science experiment: Arturo, born with seal-like flippers for arms and legs, Electra and Iphigenia, conjoined twin sisters who share one pair of legs, Olympia, a hunchbacked albino dwarf considered by her parents to be unspecial, and Fortunato, a normal-looking boy with telekinesis.
Olympia is the main protagonist of the novel and she narrates the events of her life as a circus geek. |
| From left to right: Arturo, Olympia, Electra and Iphigenia, and Fortunato*. |
Since its publication, Geek Love has shocked and surprised readers and critics, redefining the word normal and the freak show genre.
*Geek Love fanart by Jandruff.
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Olympia: "We children would smile and hug him and he would grin around at us and send the twins for a pot of cocoa from the drink wagon and me for a bag of popcorn because the red-haired girls would just throw it out when they finished closing the concession anyway. And we would all be cozy in the warm booth of the van, eating popcorn and drinking cocoa and feeling like Papa's roses."
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Age Rating: 13+
This year would have marked Anne Frank's 90th birthday had she survived the Holocaust.
In October 2018, The Diary of a Young Girl was adapted into an authorised graphic novel by Ari Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky. Folman, himself a child of Holocaust survivors, is currently directing an animated film that will retell the story of Anne
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Anne Frank: "It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."
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This book is guaranteed to introduce new readers to a Jewish teenage girl who, until her untimely death, was fearless during one of history's darkest moments.
Age Rating: 15+
In 1985, Margaret Atwood had written her bestselling dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.
In a possible future, the United States of America is no more, and in its place is the Republic of Gilead. The Christian fundamentalist men behind the coup waste no time in seizing power, stripping all the nation's women of their rights, and dividing them into castes based on their functions. One caste is made up of the fertile Handmaids whose sole purpose is to bear children for the regime due to majority of the population having been rendered infertile by STDs. The main protagonist of the book is a Handmaid named Offred and she defiantly remembers the time before Gilead, when she had her rights, her family, and her identity.
People who have read the book and watched the Emmy-winning TV series it is based on are in for a treat. My last recommendation is Renee Nault's illustrated graphic adaptation.
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"Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."
--Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
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If this is the first time you have heard of Atwood or Offred, watch this video explain why you should read The Handmaid's Tale.
Until next time,
A. Eleazar
References:
- Alcott, L. M. (1868). Little Women. Boston, Massachusetts: Roberts Brothers.
- Appleyard, K. et al (Producers), & Fawcett, J. et al (Directors). (2013). Orphan Black [Television series]. Canada: BBC America.
- Atwood, M. (2019). Handmaid's Tale: The Graphic Novel, The. Canada: Penguin Random House.
- Dunn, K. (1989). Geek Love. New York City, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- Fearnley, L. et al (Producers), & Kove, T. (Director). (2017). Threads [Motion picture]. Montreal, Canada: National Film Board of Canada.
- Frank, A. (2018). Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. United States: Pantheon.
- Hughes, S. (2018, November 2) Widows: the big-haired 80s caper that inspired Steve McQueen. Retrieved January 6, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/nov/02/the-original-widows-interview-lynda-la-plante-steve-mcqueen
- Jandruff. (2008). Geek Love Characters [Image file]. Retrieved February 5, 2019, from https://www.deviantart.com/jandruff/art/Geek-Love-Characters-107430462
- Jandruff. (2008). Geek love - Papa's Roses [Image file]. Retrieved February 5, 2019, from https://www.deviantart.com/jandruff/art/Geek-love-Papa-s-Roses-107431883
- Lambert, V. et al (Producers), & Toynton, I. & Annett, P. (Directors). (1983). Widows [Television series]. United Kingdom: Euston Films.
- Murrow, V. (2018). Power to the Princess: 15 Favorite Fairytales Retold with Girl Power. United States: Quarto Knows.
- O'Connor, G. (2010). Olympians Series, The. United States: First Second Books.
- Perry, D. (2018, April 7). Rise of Katherine Dunn: How the late Portland author survived hard times and became a literary legend, The. Retrieved February 5, 2019, from https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2017/12/the_rise_of_katherine_dunn_how.html
- TED-Ed. (2018, March 8). Why should you read “The Handmaid’s Tale”? - Naomi R. Mercer [Video file]. Retrieved February 22, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v-mfJMyBO0
- Terciero, R. (2019). Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: A Graphic Novel. United States: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
- Webber, G. (2018). Dumb: Living Without a Voice. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics.
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