The Holmes Public Library

Once Upon a Summer

“Recycle old Fairy Tales and make them anew…
that is what a good library should do!”

Join in our Summer Reading Fun with a Fairy-Tale inspired book for Grown-Ups

Recommended Authors:

A. S. Byatt (The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye- A present day fairytale with the protagonist, a sensible scholar who is given the not-at-all sensible gift of a genie.)

Orson Scott Card (Enchantment – the story of Sleeping Beauty intertwined with Russian mythology)

Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber- This collection of ten freshly woven tales presented in Carter's decidedly feminist slant.)

Alice Thomas Ellis (Fairy Tale - Imagine Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, and Morgan Le Fey folded into one story and you'll have some idea of Alice Thomas Ellis's quirky novel, Fairy Tale.)

Monica Furlong (Wise Child - In this fantasy, the setting is as much a character as Wise Child and her guardian Juniper, the village wise woman.)

Neil Gaiman (Stardust - A fairy tale that any reader looking for a timeless love story can enjoy.)

Gregory Maguire (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - Maguire, author of Wicked, once again enchants readers with his re-telling of the Cinderella story.)

Robin McKinley (Beauty- This much-loved retelling of the classic French tale Beauty and the Beast elicits the familiar magical charm, but is more believable and complex than the traditional story.)

Louise Murphy (The True Story of Hansel and Gretel - A provocative transformation of the classic fairy tale into a haunting survival story set in Poland during WWII)

Geoff Ryman (Was – a darkly imaginative, almost surreal improvisation on L. Frank Baum's Oz books)

Anne Sexton (Transformations - Sexton takes seventeen classic Grimm Brothers fairy tales and essentially transforms them into something of a modern literary masterpiece.)

Vivian Vande Velde (The Rumplestiltskin Problem -Six different imaginative retellings of the Rumplestiltskin story, each full of sassy humor that adults and teens will relish.)