FEMME TALES

About the Book

FEMME TALES: Six Short Sagas and One Long Story is a playful, irreverent, sometimes camp re-vision of seven of the Grimm’s tales. “Little Red Riding Hood” becomes “Little Red Jogging Suit,” wherein a sparky girl and her spunky grandmother take on a wolf in sheep’s clothing, only to fi nd themselves victims of the legal/judicial system. In “Hannah and Greggo,” closet-cousins of “Hansel and Gretel,” a savvy big sister saves her innocent little brother from the clutches of a wicked warlock. Other rightings-of-the-record include: “The Toad Prince or The Dog Princess or Hopeless Henry,” “Sungold and the Seven Midgets,” “AshesAngie,” “Sweeping Beauty,” and “Ms. Fisherwoman and Spouse,” illegitimate offspring of “The Frog King,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “The Fisherman and His Wife.” May you read with a laugh--and a nod, Parry invites.

About the Author

“Once upon a time . . .” is a phrase children grow up knowing introduces a story not only of adventure and romance but of human plight and peril, heroic effort and victory--and instruction. Like many of us, Roberta Parry was fed as a child traditional folk literature, which she swallowed whole without question. But as an adult, introducing these tales to her daughter, she found some no longer went down so easily. In rejection of the image of and attitude toward women presented by the eighteenth-century grim brothers, she determined to right the record from the experience and perspective of a twenty-fi rst-century woman.