Spotlight: Guest Post: Retelling Tales by Louie Stowell

To celebrate the start of the World Shakespeare Festival, Usborne editor Louie Stowell – author of Usborne Young Reading: Hamlet - tells us about the process of writing retellings for children, introducing them to stories that have been passed down for generations:

Retelling tales

One of my fondest story memories is of a retelling. I had the measles or some other childhood lurgie that kept me pinned to the bed and feverish. So, my dad decided to tell me a story. It was a story I’d heard a little bit of before – I’d seen a cartoon version of it. So, it was already an “old” story to me, in a way. I’d also read a prequel to it. But, now, my dad re-told the entire story for me.

That story was The Lord of the Rings. I then went on to read the original, and then listen to the amazing BBC adaptation from the 80s (Ian Holm as Frodo, making the films a little eerie). It remains one of my favourite stories of all time – though not, perhaps, my favourite book. My experience of the story was one of multiple tellings, across different media.

That’s what stories often are for me. Sure, I can read a great novel that could only have been written in those words. But the story beneath it, that could be told again (and will be, and probably has already been pretold).

Stories are things, for me, that have a life of their own. Good stories are, in any case. Good stories come back and back and back to haunt you, changing all the time.

I’ve done a lot of retellings over the years for Usborne – after growing up reading Usborne retellings myself. I was particularly attached to the old King Arthur where King Arthur looks like Rob Brydon. At least, he does in my head. Is it just me?

So, how do you go about turning an old story into a new book? What do you keep? What do you lose?

When I write a retelling, it’s always of a story in the public domain – for obvious copyright not-getting-sued reasons. But, older stories are ones that seem riper for retelling on the whole anyway, because they have that feeling of having been passed down through the generations, with twiddles and extras added, and other parts forgotten over time.

Usually, I’ll find myself reading multiple versions of the same story, from different original texts. Retellings are usually re-re-re-retellings. That is, unless I’m retelling a Shakespeare play – I did Hamlet a while back….

….and for that, I went back to the text, dusting off my undergraduate copy.

Studying English, I remember having long discussions and reading multiple essays about whether or not Hamlet was really mad. There was something very satisfying about covering that in a couple of sentences in the retelling. In the end, I came down mostly on the side of “really properly bonkers”, interpreting Hamlet’s madness through someone else’s eyes – so, there’s still wiggle room for him not being mad, in case anyone would rather read him the other way. (But, really, who stabs people behind curtains when they’re only acting at being insane?)

When retelling Shakespeare plays, I do try and include a bit of the language – I don’t want to imply that language is only the servant of story, or that it’s interchangeable. Just that stories have their own existence, apart from language.

When it comes to fairytales and legends, the characters often don’t have a 3D psychology in the various original stories, so there’s a lot of fun to be had in making them feel like living, breathing people and not just a set of actions in sequence.

I found myself confronting questions like “Why DOES Beauty fall for the Beast?” and “How does she feel at first about him?” which I’m not sure I’d ever thought of as a child.

There’s also the question of the morality of a story – moral and social attitudes now are radically different from the origin times of many stories I rewrite. I usually deal with that by trying to preserve aspects of the ethos of the story, as it was… but also, I’m aware that I’m writing for young children, and there is a bit of a moral duty at work here… so, I try to bring out what I think is good in the story – morally as well as narratively – to a certain extent. For example, retelling George and the Dragon recently, I made sure to bring out the contribution of the princess. Which I didn’t have to make up, but I probably gave rather more emphasis to than in the original.

One day, I’d love to do a Revolting Rhymes style retelling of various fairytales and legends, mind you. Aside from my dad’s version of ‘Lord of the Rings’, the best retelling to my mind is Roald Dahl’s Red Riding Hood, where she pulls out a pistol and gets herself a wolfskin coat. :)

Thank you so much to Louie for the guest post. A tantalizing taster of things to come in Classics Carnival covering August 2012.

Review: Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev

Title: Eyes Like Stars
Series: Theatre Illuminata
Authour: Lisa Manrchev
Publisher: Square Fish (Macmillan)
Publication Date: 13 April 2010

Source: Library



Synopsis: From GoodReads
All her world's a stage.
Beatrice Shakespeare Smith is not an actress, yet she lives in a theater.
She is not an orphan, but she has no parents.
She knows every part, but has no lines of her own.
Until now.
Welcome to the Théâtre Illuminata, where the characters of every place ever written can be found behind the curtain. They were born to play their parts, and are bound to the Théâtre by The Book—an ancient and magical tome of scripts. Bertie is not one of them, but they are her family—and she is about to lose them all and the only home she has ever known.

Review:
Wow did I completely adore this book. I felt as if I was bathing in a fountain of literary knowledge aiding my quest for education via osmosis.

The 3rd person narrative provides a means of tying all of the characters together and keeping the thread of the plot under tight control. The literary characters are further developed outside of their respective stories, giving them a wonderful roundness while creating a 'modern' persona. Applying both prose and play format added depth to the plot especially with the use of stage directions within the narrative. This blending of different styles of writing also proved to be visually dynamic on the page.

The imagery was so detailed it burst to vivid life within my imagination. I especially liked the 'thinking caps' and could really do with one myself [ : D]

Mainly focalized from Bertie's point of view. She is very creative, the mystery surrounding her appearance at the Theatre is a hinging point of the plot. Via the narrative you have the feeling of wanting to protect her. It must be my mothering instinct kicking in.

The magic of the Theatre is revealed slowly along with Bertie's part in it, beautifully intertwined with mystery. As you may already know I really want to dye my hair purple well after reading this I want it even more [ ; ) ]

This book has it all a fantastic love triangle (give me the bad boy - I was completely drawn to Ariel for me he was the Shakespearean equivalent to Damon in The Vampire Diaries), magic, mystery and romance blended seamlessly to create a wonderful piece of escapism. For me this equals win plus win.

I am desperate to read the sequel Perchance to Dream but the library is having a problem obtaining it *sniff, sniff*

Review: The Hollow by Jessica Verday

Synopsis from Amazon:
Growing up in the town of Sleepy Hollow, the mystery and intrigue over Washington Irving's classic legend are all part of daily life for sixteen-year-old Abbey. But when her best friend, Kristen, vanishes at the bridge near Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Abbey's world is suddenly turned upside down. While everyone is all too quick to accept that Kristen is dead, Abbey refuses to believe that she is really gone. And when Abbey meets the gorgeous, but mysterious, Caspian at Kristen's memorial she starts to feel like she has something to hold on to for the first time since Kristen's disappearance. But when Abbey finds a diary hidden in Kristen's bedroom, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her best friend. How could Kristen have kept silent about so much? And could this secret have led to her disappearance or even her death? Hurt and angry at Kristen's betrayal, Abbey turns to Caspian for support...and uncovers a frightening truth about him that threatens both their emerging love and her sanity...

Review:
An intriguing reworking of a classic ghost story.

The plot was built up very slowly, and seemed to hold a story within a story. On one hand you had the story of Abbey's friends mysterious death and hidden secrets. On the other you have the mysterious boy (Caspian) and old couple (Nikolas & Katy) Abbey meets in a Graveyard. The plot twists are well written and believable.

The descriptions are wonderful, I especially liked the references to the aromatherapy oils (being a trained aromatherapist as one of my myriad of jobs) I could almost smell the scents in the air.

The characters were well rounded and their personalities and actions were believable, even with the twists to the tale. However, I did find that I could not completely relate to the female protagonist (Abbey) mainly due to the fact that I cannot possibly think of wandering around a cemetery as something to do for fun! I also felt that the schools reaction to the death of one of its pupils was rather odd.

There are quotes for Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the start of the chapters, although they do reinforce the storyline I couldn't help but picture the gore-fest that was the movie Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp (remember I do not like gore being of the squeamish variety) so these did nothing to enhance the story for me, in fact I think it detracted from the actual beauty of  the story with these vivid gory pictures popping into my technicolour imagination. Not that the author would be aware of my linking the 2 things together in my head!

Although I did enjoy the story as a whole, the plot has left me with a lot of unanswered questions on both of the intertwining story-lines. I was slightly disappointed with the ending as I felt I was left hanging with all of these questions and no way of reconciling them. I am hoping the next book The Haunted will tie up some of these points for me.