Books Received

Charles Perrault: The Complete Fairy Tales. By Charles Perrault. Edited and translated by Christopher Betts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

First published in 2009, this reissued collection of Perrault's fairy tales includes a scholarly introduction and explanatory notes by Christopher Betts, who also provides a detailed chronology of important events and milestones in Perrault's life.

More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales. By Robert Bly. New York: Holt, 2018.

Known primarily as a poet, Robert Bly is also a cultural critic associated with the mythopoetic movement. In this short volume, he discusses the cultural and psychological messages embedded in six traditional fairy tales: "The Six Swans," "The Frog Prince," "The Lindworm," "The Dark Man," "One-Two Man," and "The White Bear King Valemon."

Verjüngte Antike: Griechisch-römische Mythologie und Historie in zeitgenös-sischen Kinder- und Jugendmedien (Antiquity Rejuvenated: Graeco-Roman Mythology and History in Contemporary Media for Children and Youth). Co-edited by Markus Janka and Michael Stierstorfer. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017.

This collection of seventeen essays (plus an introduction by the editors) originated in Medusa & Co. Reloaded, an international conference held in Munich in October 2015. The contributors discuss why children and young adults have a renewed interest in Greek and Roman myths, stories, and history, reflected not only in their literature but also in video games and movies. The contributors study the implications of this renaissance, describing its international scope, its didactic implications, its potential to become the vehicle for social and political commentary, and how the materials are reinterpreted and appropriated for genres such as fantasy movies.

Vom Premake zum Remake: Gender-Diskurse und intermediale Bezüge in den deutschen Verfilmungen der Kinderromane Erich Kästners (Prequels and Sequels: Gender Constructions and Media Cross-References in German Screen Versions of Erich Kästner's Children's Novels). By Tao Zhang. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2018.

Erich Kästner's literary work includes several immensely popular books for children. Like Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio, they have been adapted for film and television several times over (from 1931 to 2007). Tao Zhang investigates how such successive cinematic reinterpretations reflect changes in the zeitgeist of popular German children's culture and how the influence of modern media has affected the reception of Kästner's work. In particular, she documents how successive cinematic adaptations reflect changing perceptions of gender roles, noting that Kästner's own social construction of child and adult characters evolved over time. So deeply embedded in German cultural space is Kästner's work that Zhang ended up tracing a complex web of connections: references to other books, to both "prequels" and unrelated movies, to contemporary media, and to changes in society (including changes in Germany's ethnic diversity).