the rumpelstiltskin problem by vivian vande velde

You get a domovoi who just wants his house to be in order, a female Rumpelstiltskin hungry for love, a Rumpelstiltskin who is a pretty elf, and you even get a story or two with no Rumpelstiltskin at all. You get a Rumpelstiltskin who wants to eat a human baby, just to see what it tastes like.

I n six little alternative versions, Vivian Vande Velde explores ideas that make the story a little less ridiculous and more believable, sometimes keeping the magic, sometimes finding perfectly mundane reasons for what happens. Some of the more striking questions are: Why would the miller say his daughter can spin straw into gold, knowing full well she can’t? Why would Rumpelstiltskin – who can spin straw into gold – accept a gold ring or necklace as payment? What possessed the miller’s daughter to promise him her firstborn child? And what’s with the king, letting the girl spin gold for three nights, immediately marrying her after that, and then never expecting her to spin gold again? It just doesn’t make any sense! And believe you me, there is very little that’s not wrong with it. In the author’s note, Vivian Vande Velde casually counts up all the things that are wrong with the fairy tale. As a child, I may have wondered about why he wanted the miller’s daughter’s firstborn child, but I never paused to think about all the other oddities the tale presents. It’s true that Rumpelstiltskin has quite a few problems. And in one tale, it is the king who cleverly escapes a quite unexpected fate. Most of the time, it’s the daughter who gets off safely, but sometimes, amazingly, Rumpelstiltskin himself wins the day. A bevy of miller’s daughters confront their perilous situation in very different ways - sometimes comic, sometimes scary. Vivian Vande Velde has wondered too, and she’s come up with these six alternative versions of the old legend. Have you ever wondered just what was going on when that odd little man with the long name stepped up and volunteered to spin straw into gold for the miller’s daughter? If you stop and think about it, there are some very peculiar and rather hard-to-explain components to the story. This little book of alternate versions of Rumpelstiltskin can be read in one sitting and so was very well suited for my current busy schedule (consisting of work, work, and to even things out, some more work).įirst sentence: Once upon a time, before pizzarias or Taco Bells, there was a troll named Rumpelstiltskin who began to wonder what a human baby would taste like. Yeah yeah, Fairy Tale Frenzy is over but I still owe you a couple of reviews.

The rumpelstiltskin problem by vivian vande velde