Retellings

After "perusing" our Lit. class textbook, I've decided that I'm going to likely enjoy this book. I've always been a fan of fantasy, fairy tales, and mystical stories, and this book appears to be filled with those types of stories. The first story I noticed was Cinderella by the Grimm brothers. My little sister actually has a book filled with the original versions of the Grimm brother fairy tales, and they are surprisingly dark, shocking, and even gruesome- certainly not the Disney "retellings" of the tales. For example, I recall that in the version of Cinderella, the evil step-sisters cut of part of their toes to make the glass slipper fit. I'm not sure if this is the Grimm version of the tale, but it is certainly different than the child-friendly versions. I've always had an interest in learning the origins of fairy tales and how they have changed and been adapted over the years, so I look forward to exploring them. On a similar note, versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Peter Pan also caught my eye. Being a visual person, the pictures in the text clearly jumped out at me. There weren't many, but I recognized many of the visuals used, such as the painting Starry night and the movie cover of "Home Alone." Also, I noticed that every chapter began with a photo of the Mona Lisa, and I wonder if this has any significance as an overall theme of the book.
The book is filled with a wide variety of genres of writing. Poetry, drama, essays, fiction stories, etc. are all included. I was interested in the poetry sections specifically. I find longer stories can easily bore me, but compact poetry forces me to decipher each word, line, and phrase as if it were some type of secret code. I also noticed a section of the book with music written in it, maybe relating poetry to music, which I found intriguing because I play the piano. Going through the book, I recognized many of the stories from high school, such as The yellow wallpaper, the poem Daddy, and a few others.
Finally, there were some items in the text which I wanted to examine deeper and certain sections of the text that intrigued me more than others. Being a fantasy fan, The section about Monsters and Heroes, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde caught my attention. Towards the end of the book, there were biographies of each author which I believe could me understand each authors writing style. The final thing that struck me about this text was a section called To his coy mister: A seize of the Gay poem. It seemed like an odd name, so I'm curious as to what it entails. Overall, this text promises to be an intruguing and enjoyable read. :)