Mother Goose Refigured: A Critical Translation of Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales by Christine A. Jones, and Eight Children in Narnia: The Making of a Children’s Story by Jared Lobdell-Gainer (review)

Jones, Christine A. Mother Goose Refigured: A Critical Translation of Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales. Wayne State University Press, 2016 216p illus. with photographs
Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-8143-3892-6 $31.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-8143-3893-3 $24.99

Jones, a French professor who specializes in seventeenth and eighteenth century France, introduces her book with an exploration of gender politics, presenting a more conceptual translation of femaleness in the stories and the modernization of gender roles within the form’s conventions. A following section makes note of various interpretations and translations, as well as focusing on the scholarly movement to analyze classic fairy tales before they became classics (and were then “Disneyfied”). The concluding third of this book is a collection of annotated, straightforward translations of Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tales. An index and annotated bibliography are included.

Lobdell, Jared Eight Children in Narnia: The Making of a Children’s Story. Open Court Publishing, 2016 231p
Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-8126-9901-2 $49.95

Lobdell, a Tolkienist who has also written previously on Lewis’ adult works, here contextualizes the story of Narnia within the larger arc of Lewis’ writing career, then placing that within the history of children’s books, and specifically, fairy tales. Over the course of seven chapters, Lobdell traces the thematic underpinnings of the series through letters, essays, and other works by Lewis, connecting the fantasy of Narnia directly to Lewis’ philosophies on writing and exploring his application of the conventions of fairy tales. Not for the casual browser, this contributes to the oeuvre of research dedicated to Lewis. An index and a list of books cited are included.