The Truth About Happily-Ever-After

From Publisher’s Weekly about Megan Morrison’s GROUNDED: THE ADVENTURES OF RAPUNZEL: “Those expecting a Disneyesque Rapunzel in Morrison’s debut, first in the Tyme series, will be pleasantly surprised by the novel’s emotional depth and inventiveness.”

If you’ve seen the play or movie version of Into The Woods, you’ve seen it. The romantic fairy tale tropes have been turned upside down. The prince is anything but charming (in fact, he’s a womanizing cad). Jack climbs the beanstalk and brings back havoc and death. Rapunzel’s witch just wants a little bit of love.

When I was in my tween years I read fairy tales like a fiend. The Red and Blue Fairy Tale books are still on my shelf, side-by-side with Anderson’s. I have an old Grimm collection that is about to fall apart. What I remember is not the Disneyfied version of things: Prince Charming sweeping the poor orphaned-but-beautiful-under-that-ashy-coating maiden off her feet and into the castle. No. I remember dark, scary, terrible things. The witch being shoved into a raging fire. The dancing girl who cuts off her feet so she can stop dancing. The princess who can’t quite finish making her seventh brother’s shirt so he has to spend the rest of his days with a swan’s wing for an arm.

Yeah – scary, dark, and very real, that’s what I remember about fairy tales, not the tropes of sugary romance and happily-ever-after.

Plus, there’s something else about those original tales that has stuck with me. Most of the girls and young women are not bubble-headed bimbos. They are clever problem solvers and thinkers. They are precisely the right role models young girls need, especially to prepare us to face the real world – which is scary, dark, and sometimes terrible.

Which brings me back to Megan Morrison’s GROUNDED. Megan has crafted an original story in which the sweet fairy tale trope has been turned on its head, with a girl protagonist who solves the problem and doesn’t lean on her guy friend to solve it for her. I love it. It’s a reinvention of Grimm with all the right emphasis.

The truth about happily-ever-after is that it’s what we find in GROUNDED. Girls, especially, need stories like this. If a girl wants to wear a princess dress, let’s give her a sword to strap over it. Better yet, let’s give her a copy of GROUNDED so she knows she can chart her own course to happiness.

You’re going to love this new version of Rapunzel! Want to win your very own signed copy of Grounded, plus a cool bookmark? Please leave a comment here, or after of any of this week’s posts, for a chance to win!

You can also buy a copy of Grounded at the following locations:

Third Place Books

The Secret Garden Bookshop

Powell’s

Indiebound

Amazon

Barnes & Noble