Few fairy tale retellings for the middle-grade or young adult audience tell the story from multiple characters’ points of view, shifting between protagonist and antagonist alike. Donna Jo Napoli does just this in her retelling of the classic Rapunzel fairy tale, ZEL, alternating chapters among Zel (Rapunzel), Mother (the witch), and Konrad (the romantic interest). The underlying frame of the Rapunzel story is kept intact in this retelling for the middle grade/young adult audience, where the main effect Napoli is seeking is to deeply humanize the witch. This is accomplished by telling her chapters of the story in the ultra-closeness of a first person narrative, as opposed to the narratives in third person limited from the points of view of Zel and Konrad.

So, by encouraging identification with a villain, Napoli challenges the authority of traditional narrative patterns in fairy tales, with their simplistic and one-dimensional treatment of villains from the point of view of a distant omniscient narrator. Mother (the witch) still carries out all the expected evil deeds, but hearing her story in her distinct and poignant voice offers the reader a deep understanding of the motivations behind her actions. And by so doing, the story feels more believable, more real, more satisfying.

At the beginning of chapter 2, when they are in town on their bi-annual trip from their isolated mountain home, she expresses her relationship with her daughter in terms of a poetic and archetypal union: “I have been enjoying the unity of Mother and Daughter, weaving through the crowds like a single strand of yarn.” This statement is unusual, but not alarming, probably because of its lovely poetic and symbolic nature. The reader directly experiences Mother’s unique character through her actions and thoughts in this chapter. She shops for Zel’s birthday gifts in the town, having given her daughter permission to watch the smith shoe a horse, internally expressing gratitude towards him for this temporary but necessary separation to perform her tasks in secret.

She waxes poetical at a beautiful lute in an instrument maker’s shop. “My fingers itch to create–with needles and thread, with bow and fiddle.” Mother plays the violin, and she thinks about how she will pass her violin on to Zel, as her mother had passed it to her. She enters the shop of a scribe and carefully chooses paper, colored inks, and a special quill, all for Zel. “I can already hear her delight.” She has the power to close her eyes and will herself to see Zel–to check to see if she is safe of course, and she is reassured by seeing her daughter in her mind’s eye communing with the horse at the smithy. The reader also feels this power of hers is being used for the safety of her daughter, and is not alarmed at her invasion of the girl’s privacy. The urge for creativity and her generosity is something that readers will positively identify with. Her language is poetic in its use of metaphor and simile, when she describes the colors of cloth for Zel’s new dress:

The leaves will be emerald, like our lake in autumn; the bodice and skirt will be yellow cream, the color of the first saxifrage blooms...I spy cotton lace. I finger it gingerly...It will grace the bodice and skirt...Next I pick out the threads...mainly emerald. Emerald is the color of life and hope. Zel is these things.

The character of Mother has been revealed both in this chapter, and in Zel’s point of view in the first chapter, as loving, thoughtful, nurturing, creative, caring, protective, and every other descriptive word that might evoke the ideal of motherhood. In addition, throughout the story are numerous sensory details of Mother’s food preparation, eliciting more positive maternal associations with readers. The author crafts this chapter to affect the base feelings of the reader, to resonate viscerally with memories of their own mothers, who will now remember those details when unsavory aspects of Mother’s life, actions, and motivations are revealed as the narrative unfolds. It is impossible not be sympathetic for this mother who is so strongly connected to her daughter with bonds of love. This is especially true for readers not familiar with Rapunzel, or unaware that this is a retelling of that tale, and don’t yet know what is to come.

At the end of chapter 2, as at the beginning, she refers to herself as Mother again, after her annoyance that the shopkeeper assumed the dress would be for a daughter about to be married: “We will be together. Mother and Zel. Forever.” This statement begins to strike a chord that is a little unsettling–why is she so obsessed with Zel never marrying?

And a menacing tune begins to play out slowly, when Mother finally discovers in chapter 8 that Zel had met a young man in town. She is alarmed and jealous, seeking a way to insure that Zel will want to remain with her always on their farm. She guesses Zel has a strong desire for the gift of understanding and speaking to animals. “You would give up certain things to have that gift, wouldn’t you?...It would be worth choosing a life without a husband.” Unlike a traditional fairy tale where a character can be thoroughly evil, Mother has emotions that are uncomfortably close to those felt by normal mothers everywhere, many of whom do secretly wish they might delay the onset of puberty, adulthood, romance, in their own daughters, in a desire to protect them from the inevitable pain and suffering of life. And in some cases, to keep them home for as long as possible, to bind them with the proverbial apron strings. The reader also realizes in hearing Zel’s point of view, that she loves her mother dearly and is grateful for all the care and attention she lavishes on her. Thus Napoli manipulates readers by tapping into their feelings toward their own mothers, giving young readers the understanding of a mother’s perspective, and in the case of adult readers, identifying with their protective feelings for their own daughters.

When Mother decides she had better lock Zel in a tower to insure she has no possible contact with the opposite sex, especially one named Konrad, the reader is shocked, and convinced that Mother has somehow gone insane. But at the same time, because the reader has gotten to know her intimately through her own words of love for her daughter, her motivations, though twisted, are understood. She is not a cardboard prop of a stereotype, the “wicked stepmother,” but a real individual, greatly flawed, but pitiable. She is pitied even more when she finally tells her full story, and reveals that in her obsessive desire for a daughter she sold her soul to the devil to obtain both Zel and a magical power over nature, and that Zel is not even her biological daughter. And that part of her bargain was to convince Zel to freely accept the devil and his gifts of power when she came of age. Napoli’s use of this first person narration takes the reader into the skin of this character so completely that she is understood, even when the reader is angered and appalled by her choices and by the consequences of her actions–especially when Zel turns quite mad in her isolation in the tower.

Mother sees a mirror of her own feelings for Zel in the eyes of Konrad when he enters the tower to find not Zel, but Mother waiting to kill him. In seeing him as her “soul-mate” by sharing a common love, she has a sudden change of heart, and sacrifices herself for her daughter’s happiness, creating a patch of brambles at the last moment to prevent his death when he falls from the tower. Her narration is simple and to the point: “He lives. I die.” Readers feel relief that even though they have been manipulated into investing emotionally in a very disturbing character, the true core of unselfish mother’s love, a love that holds her daughter’s happiness as paramount, wins out in the end.

In my retelling of the Snow White story I didn’t want to create a cardboard evil stepmother, but sought to convey believable reasons for her murderous designs, which like Mother in Zel, were understandable, though also insane. The stepmother has had many miscarriages, loses her only son, and is jealous of the youth and beauty of the Snow White character, (Lumi) a reminder of her own fading beauty and inadequacy as a child-bearer, terrified that the king her husband might put her aside if she cannot produce another heir.

THE MIRROR OF TRUTH will be on Kickstarter soon. 350 pages, and over 50 original illustrations. In my retelling it is a teenage half-dwarf who creates the magic mirror for the stepmother…

Prolific and beloved author Jane Yolen passed away on June 11, 2026. Jane and I were close friends, and I’d like to honor her by sharing a few highlights of our relationship over the last 40+ years.

I moved back to Massachusetts in the early 1980’s and discovered a writing group that met at the Hatfield public library, and met Jane, who lived in Hatfield and ran the group. We became friends. I was not brave enough to share my writing at the meetings, but occasionally showed some of my illustrations, and began to learn more about writing through hearing Jane critique others.

When I was offered to illustrate The Secret Garden in 1985, I asked Jane if she’d be willing to model for the character of Mrs. Sowerby. She was delighted to pose for me. When I was offered Sleeping Beauty next, because I was still not confident in my writing skills, I asked Jane to retell the tale. This was our first collaboration. I wanted to paint Jane’s image in the book, and she was willing to ham it up and model for the sleeping cook! But perhaps the most fun I had using Jane as a model was for my book Mother Goose and Friends. To me, Jane is and always will be a modern-day Mother Goose.

Jane also encouraged me to start an illustrator’s group, along with artists Tom Leamon and Bob Marstall. She attended many of our meetings, writing books for several of the members whose work she particularly liked, helping launch their illustration careers. The Western Mass Illustrator’s Guild (WMIG) is still meeting after 40+ years, and I’ve made lifelong friends there.

After Sleeping Beauty came out, Jane introduced me to her editor at Little, Brown in Boston, who loved my art and encouraged me to both retell and illustrate a line of fairy tales. Without Jane, this might never have happened—she helped me fulfill my dream. Over the years I illustrated three more of Jane’s books: Where Have the Unicorns Gone, Hush Little Horsie, and most recently Arch of Bone, a brilliant continuation of Moby Dick for a middle grade audience. Jane also wrote a wonderful afterward for my illustrated edition of The Golden Key by George MacDonald.

Reading Jane’s book Touch Magic had a profound influence on my development as a writer. “Folklore... is the perfect guidebook to the human psyche; it leads us to the understanding of the deepest longings and the most daring visions of human-kind.”

Jane spoke at schools, conferences, and taught writing workshops, always willing to share her wisdom with developing writers. A few years ago, she invited me to join her personal writing group, and along with the other members, helped me shape my first YA fairy tale retelling into something I’m proud of. When I asked if she’d write me a blurb, she hand wrote one on the manuscript pages I was sharing that day in the group. It brought tears to my eyes.

Thank you Jane— you’ve been a big part of my life and will always be a part of my heart.

--Ruth Sanderson June 12, 2026

When I was in an MFA program in Childrens Book Writing (VCFA) I began writing my YA novel THE MIRROR OF TRUTH (still tweaking the manuscript over ten years later, but I’m now working on a Kickstarter campaign to fund a fully illustrated deluxe hardcover version.)

I have read many versions of fairy tales, especially Snow White ones, studying how writers approach the magic mirror, and give more dimension to the fairy tale characters. This is an excerpt from one of my essays at VCFA:

Many Mirrors: Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

There is little character development in traditional fairy tales, and the characters in them come across as stereotypes. “Fairy tales are more concerned with situation rather than character,” according to Iona and Peter Opie in their introduction to The Classic Fairy Tales. Folk and fairy tales were originally oral tales going back hundreds of years and sometimes more. The stories had to be reasonably short, and exciting things needed to happen in the telling in order to hold the interest of a live audience. Characters were purposefully created as simple types: flat* one-dimensional characters– the evil stepmother, the witch, the beautiful princess, the charming prince, the clever son, and so on. These characters usually had only one defining attribute, making them easy for audiences and other storytellers to remember. When the oral tales were finally collected and written down, compilers like the Grimm brothers tried to maintain that simple fairy tale style, in order to be as true as possible to the oral tradition.

*E. M. Forester first coined this phrase in Aspects of the Novel, and explains: “Flat characters... are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they are constructed around a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round.”

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine is a middle grade novel that reframes the Snow White story – and reimagines new roles for the characters of Snow White and her evil stepmother. Let’s look at where the various characters fall on the flat–round spectrum, and what effect those characterizations create in the reader.

Synopsis of the book: Aza, the renamed Snow White character in Fairest, is the most talented young singer in a kingdom that prizes the beauty of the singing voice above all. She considers herself ugly, however. Her singing talent lands her a position of the queen’s handmaid. When the king is injured the queen forces Aza, against her better nature, to use her hidden talent of projecting her voice to make it appear that the queen sings beautifully. Aza still longs for a beautiful face, and when she sees her face transformed for a moment in the queen’s magic mirror, she becomes obsessed with finding a spell to make herself permanently beautiful. The prince admires her as she is, but even after he kisses her, that does not stop her from pursuing her obsessive desire for a beautiful face. Finally discovering the secret of the queen’s mirror and the magic potions of transformation that go with it, Aza becomes beautiful. But her secret singing charade with the queen has been exposed, to the horror of everyone, and she is imprisoned. Her beauty has not saved her. She escapes and finds shelter in the Gnome Caverns, but gets tricked into eating the queen’s poisoned apple, and her spirit is imprisoned in the magic mirror with an evil entity named Skulni. Using her talented voice, she destroys the mirror and saves herself, but her looks have reverted to her former self. A prospect she learns to accept. She and the prince marry and live happily ever after.

Instead of starting with a royal birth, the beginning of Fairest sets up a new scenario with the Snow White character’s birth as a mystery. And the family dynamic has been changed: Aza is loved by her foster-parents, innkeepers of the inn where she was abandoned as a baby. She relates, “I was born singing. Most babies cry. I sang an aria” (1). The next passage is an amusing interaction with her foster-parents, as they tell her the oft-repeated story of her arrival, teasing her about her “lovely howl.” Her mother says Aza’s voice is the finest in the land, and that “if I tried, I could sing the very sun down from the sky” (2). Aza, as first-person narrator, comes across at first as self-confident, with the knowledge she was born with remarkable singing talent. Aza then exposes her negative feelings about herself when she relates:

No one has told me what happened next, but I know. Yarry, who was five, would have spoken his mind, as he does to this day. He would have said, in a tone of wonder, “She’s so ugly.”

In this recasting of the sweet story of her discovery, Aza demonstrates that she projects her negative feelings related to her appearance onto everyone and every circumstance, obscuring her view of her own talent and any understanding of how others feel about her. Aza describes herself as “unsightly,” with skin “the weak blue-white of skimmed milk,” and lips “as red as a dragon’s tongue and my hair as black as an old frying pan.” Using the “white/red/black” motif of the original fairy tale, the author surprisingly casts a young woman who is not beautiful in the role of Snow White. The reader guesses that Aza’s attitude toward her lack of beauty will be a strong thread in the story, and that a change in that attitude is likely to unfold.

Her mother’s kind words that “different wasn’t the same as looking amiss” does not change Aza’s mind about her looks. The fact that she is the story’s narrator makes the reader suspicious that her statements are likely exaggeration. Similar scenarios are acted out countless times in modern homes with mothers trying to convince their girls they don’t have to look model-perfect. Some young readers are likely to see themselves reflected in this scene, and will identify with Aza as a very believable character. And this scene is true to life–no girl’s mother can convince her she looks fine when she feels she is ugly. The mother here does not need to be a fully developed character, but fills the simple one-dimensional role of “concerned and loving parent.”

So far Aza has an external talent, singing, and an internal flaw–preoccupation with her looks. Levine succeeds in creating reader sympathy for her in the first chapter by letting Aza reveal her interior reflections in an amusing adolescent voice that falls just short of sounding whiney:

“I resembled a snow-maid, with a big sphere of a face and round button eyes.

I ached to be pretty. I wished my fairy godmother would come and make me so. Mother said we all have fairy godmothers, but they rarely reveal themselves...

Mother said fairy godmothers only watch from afar and sympathize. I don’t see the point of a hand-wring fairy godmother. I needed one who’d fly in and help...

Sometimes I wished I had been abandoned at a farmhouse...The cows wouldn’t have minded if an ugly maid cleaned their stalls. Or would they?”

When she meets the queen for the first time, Aza does not come across as the jealous type, a character mark in her favor: “Her honey-colored hair shone as though a bit of sunlight was caught in each strand. Her skin seemed to glow from within, like porcelain...She was ethereal, and I was base.” She is matter-of-fact, simply awed by the queen’s beauty.

Levine does not paint the queen as the one-dimensional evil witch of the original fairy tale, and works hard to counter the stereotype. Queen Ivi greets the self-conscious Aza with a genuine smile, and speaks words of reassurance to her about how petrified she was when she first arrived. The queen seems to have taken a genuine liking to Aza when she speaks to her the next day:

“As soon as I saw you, I knew I could trust you. I thought, here’s someone who could be my friend. You have such an honest face.”

I wondered if she might like me because of my ugliness. That had never happened before...

“I’d like you to be my lady-in-waiting. I am sure you would always be kind.”

Aza cannot take the compliment as given–the mirror of an honest face that attracts the queen–but must interpret it though the lens of her perceived ugliness. The queen then generously offers to make her a lady, give her land and an allowance to help her family back home. After this bright and auspicious start, the darker side of the queen’s personality is quickly revealed, when the king is accidentally knocked unconscious at a performance of centaurs. Ivi calls to Aza and throws herself into her arms, weeping.

“What will happen to me if he dies?”

This was what she was thinking? I patted her on the back and murmured, “Don’t cry, it’s all right, he won’t die...”

“Don’t leave me alone...Who will love me now?”

The young queen has revealed that her self-worth is defined only by the love of a man. A reference not to her looks, but to her insecurity as a woman with no agency of her own in this society. Though she is self-centered, she is not a one-dimensional villain, and does not come across as evil. When she learns that she is expected to write and sing a healing song for the king, the queen does not want to expose her poor singing voice to the people. Because she has discovered Aza’s ability to “illuse,” to throw her singing voice, Ivi asks her to create the deception that she herself has a beautiful voice. Aza refuses repeatedly, to her credit, and this exchange shows the reader Aza’s inherent honesty. The queen then threatens to take away all the things she promised Aza, and more:

“If you’re not my friend, you’re my enemy, and an enemy of the kingdom. The proper place for an enemy of the kingdom is in a prison cell.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“I don’t think your inn would flourish, either. I think its license would be revoked.”

Both the queen’s and Aza’s characters are well developed by the author in this exchange. Again, Levine has surprised the reader by not characterizing the queen as jealous of Aza’s looks, as in the original tale. In a clever twist, she does desire Aza’s beauty –she wants Aza’s beautiful voice for her own.

When the queen becomes manipulative, her contradictory nature makes her fascinating, and believable. Aza’s interaction with the queen brings out her honesty and family loyalty, giving the reader a few positive personality attributes to hang on her, and pity her current situation of moral dilemma in having to act dishonestly. The preoccupation with her looks had taken on a one-note quality in the story, like the endless and slightly annoying refrain of a song. But Aza’s perceptiveness adds to her own characterization:

“I found pity mixing with my fear of Ivi. Yes, she was ruthless, but she was also fretful and discordant. How did she endure herself?”

The queen can be viewed as the one who has achieved more dimension in the story than Aza. But Aza’s ability to perceive the queen as a multi-dimensional character, while remaining blind to her own positive attributes, is itself a contradiction, and a very realistic human trait. She remains a compelling character in the story, but is eclipsed by the queen in many ways that are similar to the original Grimm’s tale. The queens in both stories have more agency, and more personality, than the main character.

When Aza comes back to life after the queen has poisoned her, Ivi seems relieved, and even happy to see her: “We can be friends again. I know more ways to fix you hair.” And in the end, the reader feels sorry for this shallow, selfish, weak queen, when it is revealed that she was under the influence of the evil mirror for most of the story. And she loves the king, in her own way. Levine succeeds in creating a very dimensional character in reimagining the evil queen, arguably the most well-rounded character in the story.

For me, the most fascinating part of the Snow White story is the magic mirror. Contemporary retellers approach the mirror in different ways. Some avoid the magical element altogether, while others create a distinctly evil personality for it. Levine uses the mirror and its resident evil entity, Skulni, not to pit one female against the other, but to mirror the desire for perfect beauty in each of them individually. Aza’s preoccupation with her appearance is magnified when the magic mirror comes on the scene, about a hundred pages into the story, but it is for-shadowed in her first meeting with the prince:

I sensed eyes on me. I glanced up, and it was the prince. I felt my blotchy blush begin. I saw myself in my mind’s mirror. Blushing made me as garish as blood on snow (39).

This passage punctuates again how Aza’s self-image colors her every interaction, and sets up reader anticipation, because they know a magic mirror is likely to appear on the scene and complicate her life.

She notices the mirror on the queen’s table a few times, and when she finally gets a chance and gazes into it, Aza sees herself transformed into a ravishing beauty. But only for a moment. Her internal response: “A magic mirror! Did it produce only illusions, or might its magic alchemize me from lead into gold?” The evil personality of the mirror is not yet revealed, only hinted at when she notices the name Skulni etched on the mirror’s frame. Aza does not get a chance to see it again for quite a while. The mirror’s effect on her, however, is profound, and she thinks about it constantly.

That one glimpse of herself as a beauty causes Aza to do all in her power to seek out the means to affect this transformation permanently, and she sets out for the library to research beauty spells. This is the first assertive act by Aza, though her new-found agency is obviously misplaced into following a superficial quest. There is trouble in the kingdom, with queen wrecking havoc with important customs of the people, yet Aza mentions these things in passing, and does not spend time trying to help, showing readers her rather shallow nature. Aza succeeds in finding a beauty spell, and botches it, temporarily turning herself to stone. An apt metaphor for someone who refuses to change her self-focus. The spell wears off, and she is stupidly undeterred. With the help of the librarian, she discovers a passage in a book describing the very mirror in the queen’s possession:

“Magic mirror: Unique...Commanded by maverick fairy Lucinda and often dispensed by her as a wedding gift...Mirror has beautifying and other appearance-altering properties in conjunction with magic potions...The creature within the mirror is called Skulni...He may alter whomever he reflects, but he may show himself and may speak only to those who’ve drunk one of his potions...He may escape under unspecified circumstances.”

Finally the reader is made aware of the magic mirror and its properties through the agency of the protagonist. Aza comes to the conclusion that the mirror was likely to have made Ivi beautiful, but she was probably “not hideous, if she’d received the mirror just before the wedding. The king wouldn’t have fallen in love with a hideous maiden.” Aza remains blind to that fact that the prince seems to genuinely like her in spite of her “hideous” looks, and when that friendship develops into a romantic interest when her kisses her, Levine stretches the readers’ suspension of disbelief more than a little. Even after that episode with the prince, Aza goes on to drink the mirror’s beauty potion, after being arrested for her deception/collusion with the queen and her falsely beautiful singing voice, claiming that the authorities are sure to forgive her if she is beautiful. This echoes the Grimm’s tale when the hunter lets Snow White go because he has pity for her beautiful face, and in circling back to that reference the author leads readers into familiar territory, waiting for the next twist in the tale, and what will become of her now that she is beautiful. The magic mirror’s role in this is disappointing.

Levine’s characterization of the mirror and its properties is convoluted, complex, and confusing. Near the end of the story the queen disguises herself as a gnome (the dwarf metaphor) when Aza is hiding out with them, following the structure of the Grimm’s story. Aza eats the queen’s poisoned apple, drops into a comatose state, and then surprisingly, her spirit is transported into the magic mirror. This is one surprise that will not delight most readers. The story slows to a crawl by the complexities of creating an interior world for the mirror at this late stage in the story: It turns out that when a person is close to death who has drunk the mirror’s beauty potion, she gets transported into the mirror and must reside in it while the resident entity Skulni gets a well-deserved vacation. Aza learns that when she actually dies, she will go to her final resting place and Skulni will return, having had his vacation on tropical isles, with lots of interesting food and other entertainments. A tussle between Aza and Skulni ends with Aza shattering the mirror from the inside, destroying both it and the creature, returning to her body just as the prince is banging on her back to dislodge the apple. In an attempt to add levity and more dimension to the mirror’s character where none was needed, Levine misses the mark, and leaves the reader asking, “What was that all about?” The fact that Aza shows bravery in this scene, adding dimension to her character, is eclipsed by the distracting complexity and personality of the mirror. The reader barely notices when she is transformed back into her original self and reluctantly accepts her appearance, and the fact that other people, notably the prince, don’t mind it at all. A mixed message to be sure­­– to be defined by the mirror held up by the male.

A more compelling mirror in the story is the self-reflecting mirror in Aza’s mind. That distorted mirror causes her no end of trouble, and the first person narrative illuminates her contradictory nature: Aza can perceive the complexities of others, while remaining blind to her own true nature, until the very end of the story. Except for the fact that readers are surprised that she is so slow to change, Aza never surprises them in any other way, and surprising the reade is a quality that is desired for round characterization. However, the author succeeds in creating a character with the contradictory nature that is important for reader empathy, though Aza’s characterization is arguably more two-dimensional, rather than multi-faceted. Considering all these factors, and in spite of the questions raised by some aspects of the story, the character of Aza holds up an important mirror that reflects all readers, for everyone has blind spots in their mind’s mirror of self-image.

After getting only rejections for the last six months for THE MIRROR OF TRUTH, my YA retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, I’ve decided to fully illustrate it and do a Kickstarter to fund a special deluxe edition (foiled cover, etc.) before launching it on Amazon. I am planning 30+ chapter head illustrations and 8+ full color illustrations. a map, and character portraits. This scratchboard illustration with the text around it will be made into a letterpress print by a local company, and used in a reward for my campaign. (Prelaunch should be live in mid-February.) Ravens are prominently featured in the story and will appear in many chapter-head illustrations.

This is my “heart” story, one that began when I was a child, playing in an abandoned theme park in the middle of the woods near my best friend’s house. A few years later when I was in art school I took a photo (below) of the stone cottage there that I had always imagined was the cottage of the seven dwarves. This place helped inspire my lifelong love of fairy tales. I’ve retold and illustrated many fairy tales over the years, mainly for Little, Brown. I’m most proud of THE ENCHANTED WOOD, which is an original fairy tale that won two state awards.

I started writing THE MIRROR OF TRUTH (my first novel) over ten years ago when I was enrolled in the graduate program in writing at VCFA, and was greatly encouraged and helped by my advisor, author Will Alexander (Nat. Book Award winner for GOBLIN SECRETS) . Since then it’s been in and out of the drawer, working on it sporadically, but what finally inspired me to finish it was joining author Jane Yolen’s writing group three years ago. I’ve been friends with Jane for over 40 years and have illustrated three of her books.

I did this portrait of my main character, Ban, in scratchboard quite a few years ago, planning to offer to illustrate the book in BW if a publisher were interested. (Most mainstream publishers don’t want illustrations for novels, though.) I’ve decided now to illustrate the book in my full-color oil painting style for the upcoming Kickstarter edition. The story is told from alternating points of view: teen-age half-dwarf Ban (Think cute dwarf Kili from the Hobbit movie) and teen-age Lumi ( the Snow White character name.)

In my story, Ban and Lumi meet after he has delivered a dwarf-made mirror to her stepmother, offering to secretly add a Spell of Truth onto it for a great deal of gold. Lumi is tending a wounded raven in the kitchen garden, and they exchange stories. He tells her the dwarf creation myth...

“Before the earth existed, there was Darkness. And hidden in the Darkness was an invisible Being, the all-powerful One we call the Mighty Hammer, though that is not His true name. For His true Name is known only to Himself.

Thought, a male raven, sat on His right shoulder, and Desire, a female raven, sat on His left shoulder. A raven named Wisdom hovered above him. After passing many ages in the darkness, the voices of Wisdom, Thought and Desire convinced him to create a Change in the darkness.

Soon, the darkness began to shine like a mirror. And this mirror reflected the image and glory and beauty of the Mighty Hammer’s true being.

And He was pleased with His reflection.

One day the Mighty Hammer had the Desire to expand His glory, and he had the Thought that he needed to shatter the mirror to make that come to pass, and the Wisdom of how to proceed. And when he shattered the mirror, bright stars appeared in the sky, and the Earth with its oceans and mountains and forests appeared below. And the Mighty Hammer placed the Sun above the Earth to light the day and the Moon to light the night.

The Mighty Hammer was pleased.

And under the light of the Sun and the Moon, the Earth became the Mother of all life— the plants and animals and fish and insects and birds. And in the cave of the Earth Mother’s womb, the Mighty Hammer created the dwarves, the first people of the world. He created them to reflect the aspects of his nature— to have thoughts and desires, however wisdom was something they must strive to attain, so they would grow and change. And the Mighty Hammer set all life upon the Earth and in the Earth into vast patterns of Change. And that’s why we have seasons— of life and death and rebirth.

The Mighty Hammer was pleased.

And buried deep in the Earth were all the gems and the precious metals that were but dim reflections of the power and beauty that was and is the Mighty Hammer. They were his wedding gifts to the Earth Mother. And this is why the dwarves love the caves under the Earth, for it is our place as the first peoples of the earth. We create things of beauty to honor the Mighty Hammer, our Creator, and the Earth, our Mother.”

Tackling the theme of Truth in a novel is a foolish thing. But when I was 13 years old I read somewhere that the sun was a symbol of truth. I started to draw suns with faces and wanted the search for Truth to be a goal in my life. My friends nick-named me Ruth Truth. I was raised Catholic and now am an Orthodox Christian. The Holy Spirit is referred to in prayer as “The Spirit of Truth.” Basically when I was 13 I was starting to search for God. This story took a very long time to write, and will likely be my only novel. I am drawn to images more than words, and pictures come more easily to me. I’m still a working illustrator, though I plan to slow down a little soon. (I’ll be 75 this year.) The scratchboard illustration above is a version of the mirror with the frame Ban has carved. I’ll be now doing a painted version where the frame will look like carved wood. I’m not sure whether I‘ll include this picture in the book.

My favorite line from my story:

“What you believe is not always what is true.”

THE MIRROR OF TRUTH is 86,000 words (324 pages)and should appeal to readers 13 and up. Go to www.ruthsanderson.com if you’d like to read the first chapter.

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In Snow in Summer, author Jane Yolen relocates the story of “Snow White” to the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia after the Great Depression. Although she places the retelling in a more modern and realistic setting, the author mirrors the characterizations of the original antagonists–an actively evil stepmother versus a passively good Snow White. At first glance this strategy might surprise fans of contemporary fairy tale novelizations, who expect these old characters reimagined in surprising new ways. However, Yolen does create something new in her revision. By casting characters that so closely resemble their traditional counterparts into a carefully considered new setting, Yolen crafts a compelling story for middle grade readers that focuses on an issue as relevant today as it was when the tale was told hundreds of years ago–the pathological abuse of a child.

In tackling this difficult issue, Yolen creates a believable, naive young protagonist in the first-person narrator, Summer, with whom readers will want to sympathize. She is not the bland Snow White of the traditional tale, spared from death by the hunter, taken in by the dwarves, then rescued by a prince–all for her beauty. Yolen does not even address the issue of feminine beauty and women’s gender roles in her story, but addresses instead the issue of cruelty in a parent, and a child’s general lack of agency in that situation. As in all fairy tales, the reader knows the Snow White character will somehow prevail here, and the fairy tale frame makes this dark theme more palatable to young readers. And unlike the traditional Snow White, this character does not remain passive. Over the course of the novel Summer changes from an innocent self-blaming victim of child abuse and neglect to a young adult who takes charge of her own fate and defeats her evil stepmother.

In Summer’s very first encounter with her future stepmother, readers immediately learn that she will have a difficult time resisting this strange, powerful woman:

“My feet felt rooted to the floor...She reached out an elegant hand to me. I found I had a kind of strength, a kind of giddiness, and almost skipped over to where she sat...This new woman’s hands were cold as ice cut from a winter pond, and as hard. Only then did I try to pull away, but of course she was too strong for me and I had to stay, uncomfortably perched on her lap like a cat on a patch of ice.”

Readers understand from this exchange that her stepmother will have great power in this relationship, and the passage hints at her future cruelty in Summer’s use of the ice metaphor. Then a ray of hope shines in readers’ hearts when Summer is able to resist the command to call the witch “Mama.”

And Summer’s new stepmother is indeed a witch. The very next chapter, and occasional other chapters, are narrated from the stepmother’s point of view, serving to illuminate her evil character. She reminisces about her life with her Master, who taught her the Craft, the occult arts. Because he didn’t love her–she relates–she had to kill him. And readers learn that what she desires does not exactly mirror the original tale: she wants wealth and power, not beauty, and is willing to slowly kill her husband to inherit and sell his valuable land, which she knows is sought after by a railroad. The character is a sociopath, and a believable one. And the reader is afraid for Summer, because they learn by her own account that she will try to convert her to the dark arts, or eventually have her killed.

Summer is a typical naive eleven-year old living in a depressed rural community in the early twentieth century. A child in those times obeys one’s elders and does not question them. She helps her stepmother grind herbs for a special “po-tency” drink for her father. She does not dare to think her stepmother is trying to harm him, though she notes that “he became distant from the moment he began drinking it, no longer responding to any of my questions.” But guiltily she admits that now “at least I could sit in his lap and he didn’t throw me off. Readers understand she is a child starved for affection, and that she tries to interpret events in a positive light, especially when she is receiving praise and affection from her stepmother at first:

“I should have relaxed, what with Stepmama taking care of Papa and her spending time with me and showing me how to grind things in her big mortar–nuts, herbs, flowers. Giving me hugs every time I did a good job. Calling me a beauty and a smart child.”

She does finally grow wary when her father stops shaving and bathing. And she notices her stepmother has kept his hair clippings in a bowl in her room from when she cuts his hair. When Summer reaches into the bowl and gets an electric shock, her stepmother yells at her to stay out of her room. Still, Summer clings to the hope that her stepmother is not evil:

“Remember, I was eleven. Stepmama was all I had, the only one who paid the slightest bit of attention to me every single day. I thought that made her a good person, only just someone not able to give any more than that little. That little had become enough.”

She still does not lay blame on her stepmother for her father’s condition: “Did I believe something bad was happening? Of course. Papa was clearly sick, fading away. Did I believe that Stepmama was responsible? Not for a minute.” Her denial is believable, yet readers want to shake her to wake up to the reality of her situation, and are increasingly concerned for her safety.

When Summer turns twelve, she becomes a little bolder, “like the girl in one of my favorite fairy tales, Mr. Fox.” Her Cousin Nancy is coming to take her out for her birthday, and she sneaks into her stepmother’s bedroom when she is out on an errand and uses some of her make-up. Summer uncovers the mirror, and it speaks to her, telling her to ask a question. She thinks of dozens of questions, about her father’s health, her stepmother’s desires, what she would be when she grew up. Notably, she does not ask about her looks. The question she decides to ask highlights her need for a true mother: “Will I ever see Mama again?” Halfway through the mirror’s answer that she will see her mother twice, but “will not know her until long after,” her stepmother returns in a rage. “The punishing times quickly followed,” Summer relates, and she forgets about the mirror for a long time. Readers hearts break for her when she describes why she feels she deserves the punishments:

“After all, she was punishing me for the bad things I’d done. And I had done them. I’d gone into her room and touched her private pots and paints and scent. I’d broken bottles on her floor. There were no excuses. It was her right to punish me. I was a sneak. An ungrateful child. No credit to my dead mama or fading papa...I didn’t cry. Not when she hit me again with the side of the brush or with the bristle side or with the ruler I used for homework or a wooden clothes hanger or a ladle whenever the mood took her, though she was always careful not to raise a bruise where anyone could see.”

Children have little agency of their own, and are subject to the rules and punishments adults impose on them. A child’s understanding of adult behavior is limited, and Summer is unable to view her stepmother objectively. Using a naive child as a first person narrator is an effective way to get into the skin of a child under the influence of an abusive adult. Self-blame is a common reaction in victims of child abuse, so sadly this scenario rings true and the scene transcends all times, cultures, and socio-economic status.

The very next chapter is a short interlude from the stepmother’s point of view, where she relates that she herself was beaten by her master. Victims of child abuse are known to be more likely to become abusers themselves. But because readers learned earlier that she killed her abuser, they will not shed many tears for her past suffering. They will understand her character a little better, yes, but they will know that Summer is never going to be the person her stepmother is, even though she too is a victim of abuse. Yolen mirrors this similar situation to shine a light on the extreme difference in their basic characters, and that ultimately people have a choice whether to act in a good or evil manner.

The tension in the story has been slowly building up to this point, and Summer’s character becomes more and more downtrodden. Readers’ anticipation is heightened when Summer’s stepmother takes her to a church of Pentecostal snake charmers:

“Caressing the snake’s spade-like head, the preacher suddenly leaned over and kissed the top of it. The snake paid him no attention but looked straight at me, its smile startlingly familiar. It took me a moment before I realized it was exactly Stepmama’s smile. Then the rattler opened its mouth. That mouth was dark, cavernous, the teeth shiny. Its forked tongue flicked out. At me.”

Summer is terrified and faints from fear right after this passage. So, in this retelling, the lure of the magic comb and the enchanted stays of the original tale are eschewed in favor of the seductive appeal of snake charming. Well, her stepmother did hope she might be seduced, but she was disappointed. The author has carefully chosen this setting for her story to effectively make use of known customs that fit with the occult themes in her story. This practice is actually quite real –it is a bizarre branch of Christianity which is still practiced today in the south. As far as the rest of the magic in the story, the stepmother’s Master might have been a practitioner of Conjure, an occult practice prevalent in the south. And scrying in mirrors for divination purposes has a long history throughout the world.

When Summer experiences her first period, it marks an emotional as well as a physical transition. She defies the authority of her stepmother and visits the mirror again the next time she leaves the house. In an act parallel to her stepmother’s, she is entering a forbidden room, just like her stepmother did before she defeated her Master, to find his book of spells and the magic mirror. By asking her own questions of the magic mirror, Summer exhibits the beginning of her own agency, her own power to act.

The author purposefully creates a stereotypical evil stepmother so that the dark theme of the story comes across as fairy tale fantasy, not a realistic horror story. But the underlying message is clear. In her development of this story and the complex character of Summer, Yolen shows readers that in order to escape an abusive home situation, and find independence and agency, one must leave that home and never return. Characters do not always need to be mirrors for the reader; sometimes the goal of the author is to give the reader the experience of being in the skin of a character undergoing extreme trauma, to inspire sympathy and understanding for someone in a similar situation. Not every reader is going to be an abused child. But by clothing this issue in a suspenseful fairy tale frame with a “happily ever after” at the end, Yolen succeeds in shining a beacon on a universal and ongoing problem that no society in history has ever succeeded in solving.

Yolen, Jane. Snow in Summer. Philomel Books, 2011

I highly recommend this book!

Happy Thanksgiving,

Ruth

In an introduction to the Snow White tale type in his collection, Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales, fairy tale translator and critic Jack Zipes relates that oral variations were collected in Western Asia, North Africa, and Europe during the nineteenth century that reveal the popularity of this tale type. He includes many stories from other countries in his collection. But it is the Grimm’s’ version of the tale that eclipsed all others in popularity. Only in the Grimm’s’ version of this tale type does a magic mirror have such a central and repeating motif, one that has terrified, delighted, and enchanted audiences and readers to this day.

Jacob Grimm’s brother Ferdinand apparently gave him the first version of the tale in 1806, which Jacob then included in a hand-written letter to his mentor Carl von Savigny. This letter was translated by Jack Zipes and included in the aforementioned book. The mirror is present in this tale, but only speaks out loud at the beginning, when Snow White’s mother asks:

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most beautiful woman in England?”

The reply of the mirror is:

“Snow White is a hundred thousand times more beautiful”

Besides the hyperbole of a “hundred thousand times,” which is so absurd it is almost laughable, the narrative surprisingly sets the tale in England. One major attribute that differentiates the fairy tale from realistic fiction is the lack of a specific place for its setting, and in the first written version in the 1812 Grimm’s’ collection, the specific place of England is no longer mentioned by the mirror in the story. To name a place in a story, the reader might jump to the conclusion that perhaps there was indeed a very real, historic, murderous queen involved. It is easy to imagine why this was edited out.

What has made fairy tales so appealing for so many generations is just that very lack of specificity–the reader can enter a land of “once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom,” an almost dream-like place where the often harsh, violent, events exist, not in a real place, but in an almost mythical realm where magic, animal helpers, and fairy godmothers are accepted realities, and the protagonists in the story always win against impossible odds.

The rest of this early hand-written tale contains the dwarfs, the three temptations, and the glass casket motif of the familiar Grimm’s’ tale. However, the queen herself drives into the forest, tells Snow White to get out and pick her a beautiful rose, and then abandons her to the wild beasts. The queen’s anger develops slowly. The storyteller does not use the device of the mirror directly again, but the queen simply “learned” that her daughter was alive again after each episode. This lack of a repeating motif with the powerful image of a magic mirror speaking makes this early tale lacking in the more dramatic impact of the first printed version by the Grimm brothers in 1812.

The beginning of the first print version of Snow White is the same as the hand-penned version—a queen looking out her window, pricks her finger and declares her desire for a daughter “as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of the window frame.” But Wilhelm Grimm had gathered more versions of the tale, according to Zipes, and perhaps that is why the magic mirror gained greater prominence in the first print version. Another significant change occurred in a revised edition for children, where the tales were made a less shocking, especially any reference to sexual content. In the story of Snow White, the brothers chose to soften the impact of maternal filicide by changing the evil mother into an evil stepmother. In the 1812 version, the mirror’s answer to Snow White’s (biological) mother is “You my queen have a beauty quite rare, but snow white is a thousand times more fair.” These are the identical words spoken, but to the stepmother, in the later versions. However, in the context of having a desire for a beautiful daughter and then trying to murder that daughter because she is more beautiful, the first version of the story produces a much more horrifying image in the reader/listener. An evil stepmother, a wicked witch, can more easily be understood as having her own self interests at heart, however demented they are.

The Grimm’s brothers use the fairytale trope of things happening threes in having the mirror repeat the same message each time after the queen thinks she has killed Snow White. When she asks the mirror who is fairest in the land, the mirror speaks its reply:

“You my queen, have a beauty quite rare

But beyond seven mountains, this I must tell

Snow White is living and doing quite well.

And yes, she’s still a thousand times more fair.”

The hyperbole of Snow White being ten thousand times more fair has been reduced and edited down to a mere thousand times more fair, still an obvious exaggeration but not an absurd one, and this simple change by the Grimm brothers strengthens its impact. This message of a beautiful young girl surpassing an aging beauty has led many people studying this tale to ask, “Whose is the voice of the mirror?”

For Jack Zipes , the tale is not primarily about the dangers of pride and envy, but rather the voice of the mirror sounds to him like the voice of a male-dominated society where the highest appreciation of a woman is prescribed as the quest to become as beautiful and thereby as attractive to men as possible. He raises an interesting point, and it is noteworthy that her beauty is the main factor in the huntsmen’s pity, the dwarfs taking her in, and the prince’s fascination for a seemingly dead (but beautiful!) body.

After each attempt to end Snow White’s life by offering her trinkets that appeal to her —and mirror the queen’s own vanity—laces to accent her breasts, a beautiful comb to accentuate her hair, a red-ripe apple to symbolize sexual knowledge, the queen becomes more and more enraged after hearing the words of the mirror repeated again and again. The unhappy queen/stepmother is obsessed with doing away with whatever stands in her way to retain her youthful beauty and the title of the fairest in the land.

Thoughts: Beauty is transcendent. Timeless beauty transports us. It is natural to want to turn something of beauty into art—artists have always been inspired by a beautiful landscape, a beautiful object, a beautiful face. Seeing beauty gives us pleasure. We are hardwired for beauty. The law of attraction sends men messages when they see an attractive member of the opposite sex. It is biology. And yes, we are civilized creatures, but this stuff is lizard-brain hard wired. The desire of the stepmother to remain beautiful, attractive, to be framed as an icon of perfection, a god(dess) as it were, is a deep-seated human desire that walks hand-in-hand with the fear of death. Beauty feels deathless. However, looking into a mirror one sees not just the present image, but a future version of what that face might look like. And remembers a past version of one’s younger and more vibrant self. And one usually sees only the flaws and imperfections that others never notice. It can be argued that the queen’s anger at not being the most fair was simply hiding her fear, as anger at its root is often simply masking fear. The mirror magnified that fear, personifying it into the body of Snow White, but arguably the queen would have hated anyone, and would inevitably have had other younger women surpassing her in beauty. The queen was jealous, yes. Narcissistic, yes. A sociopathic homicidal maniac, yes. But at the core of her being, she simply had not accepted her mortality. To her, beauty was commensurate with immortality, and if she could hold on to that title of most fair, most beautiful, she could somehow beat death.

To be beautiful feels like the farthest thing from death, for beauty is a transcendental ideal, something to be framed as art, everlasting. The final proclamation the mirror makes in the Grimm’s tale is,

“My queen, you may be fairest here,

But the young queen is a thousand times more fair.”

The queen’s anger is now gone, and the text states that she was “paralyzed with fear” She hears the words that the young queen (her replacement) is a thousand times more fair. More alive. The queen cannot move–she has lost. Life is the victor, the eternal rebirth of new beauty, and the aging beauty must die for trying to steal the very life of Snow White in a mad and fruitless attempt to escape the inevitable cycle of life, and her own death. This is the metaphor of the mirror for me, perhaps because I am well past the queen’s age and looking into that mirror is reflecting my own mortality. The metaphor of the mirror strikes us all.

In a very early draft (10 years ago!) of my Snow White retelling, I was playing with the idea of a crow companion for my half-dwarf protagonist. I later changed this to interactions with his dwarf best friend, who would be able to converse in more detail. I did hate to delete this chapter, but as they say, writers must sometimes “Kill their darlings” to serve the overall plot. Ravens ( I changed crows to ravens) are featured prominently in my story, though. (Sign up for my Mirror of Truth NEWS on my website ruthsanderson.com to read the current 1st chapter of my novel. (The manuscript is still out with agents as of October 2025)

THE MIRROR OF TRUTH

An early version of Chapter 2 (Not used)

“ Coward.”

The annoying bird just wouldn’t quit. “Yes, I know, I know,” said the dwarf, tossing a scrap of partially cooked rabbit meat to the crow. “You’d be a coward too, in my shoes.” Seiben was happy the crow didn’t know many words, because all the words it did seem to know were negative ones. It understood everything, though, that was plain. Wasn’t a bad companion, as companions went. He knew many a dwarf whose vocabulary consisted of grunts. At least the bird was attentive.

“I want to sculpt her face, yes. I told you that. I could have done that and more.” The crow let out a squawk. “Oh, not that. Your mind is in the gutter. Ah yes, that’s where you find your meals, so no surprise your thoughts dwell there too.” The smell of roasting rabbit was starting to make his mouth water, and he turned the makeshift spit to brown it just a bit more. He liked it more well done than the bird, who preferred his dinner raw, or rotten ­––crows weren’t choosey.

“The queen likes my carving. She wants me to decorate her chests, her bed, (don’t start!) her tables and chairs. The furniture in the castle is plain, and the king is a boor. He has no taste for anything but food and women. I feel sorry for her.”

Seiben pulled the rabbit from the spit and sliced off a leg for himself. He leaned back against the castle wall, savoring the sweet meat. “Queen Cecylia is beautiful And she wants me to carve her furniture to make it beautiful. I turned her down, but that fact doesn’t make me a coward. It’s not her I’m afraid of.”

“Coward,” cawed the cheeky bird again, and hopped closer, so close the dwarf could have reached out and easily wrung its neck. Looking up at him with a beady eye, the crow tilted its head for another serving of rabbit. “Think yer smart, dontcha?” He had slipped back into his familiar dialect. “ Here, ‘tis the last of it. Off with ya. I need to sleep. Long journey tomorrow.” The crow gulped down its prize and flapped noisily up into a tree nearby, disappearing in a blanket of leaves.

Tomorrow he would leave. Seiben stirred the embers of the fire for a long while, until the coals were almost spent. He could have started back home after his audience with the queen, after he had turned her down. Dwarves could see quite well in the dark, spending most of their time in the caves, in the mines. But when he had gone out the gate of the town, he had turned off the road and walked along the perimeter wall in the dark, trailing his hand along the still sun-warmed stone. The path toward the mountain did not beckon, the treasure-filled mines exerted no pull, the thought of his home held no appeal.

His home? A hut in the woods with six other frustrated, bitter dwarves. Some home. But better to live in a hut in the woods than to sleep in the caves near the mines and possibly see the woman he would never have. This had been a fool’s journey, to think the mirror would fetch the price he needed to bid against so many wealthy dwarves for Kurta’s hand.

He lay on the ground, back against the now-cooling castle wall, head on his pack, willing oblivion to come. His mind would not slow down, would not allow the darkness to take him somewhere else, anywhere else. Was it better to give up? Or should he risk his sanity, stay here and work for the queen? He could possibly earn enough to bid for Kurta when the Pairing took place next spring. Nine months.

He turned onto his back and gazed up at the moonless night sky. He had not noticed where he’d stopped to camp, for it had been full dark when he left the queen earlier. Now he realized where his feet had taken him. The queen’s tower loomed above him, a dim glow illuminating a single narrow window at the very top of the tower. Not the audience chamber. This room was much, much higher up than he had climbed. Her bedroom perhaps.

There had to be a chance, a sliver of hope. Perhaps his father’s warning had been wrong, and the voice of the mirror in his mind mirror would not drive him mad, like the maker of the dwarf king’s mirror had been driven mad. He could stay, carve and decorate the human queen’s furniture. He could craft jewelry for her worth many mirrors. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe it would be worth the risk. He must choose, and there was really only one choice that he could live with.

Remaining here would probably drive him mad, but here he would remain, and here he would work for the queen until spring.

He was already half-mad. What did he have to lose?

Everything.

The next morning the crow served him breakfast in bed. What the crow considered breakfast, that is. The beady eyes of dead squirrel greeted him when he opened his eyes. He sighed. The crow watched him from a boulder, where he perched, preening his feathers, the remains of a second squirrel scattered like the bones of a fortune teller all over the surface of the flat rock.

This is a sketch I’m developing (it’s rough— the finish will be in pen and ink) of the map for my fairy tale reimagining of the story of Snow White, THE MIRROR OF TRUTH. I love maps in fantasy books, starting of course with the Lord of the Rings, which I referred to many times reading the series. (I painted a copy of Tolkein’s map years ago, flanked by my paintings of the Shire and Mordor.) Having a map helps the reader enter into the world the author has envisioned and more clearly understand the actions and the places in the story. Maps make fantasy worlds feel more real.

In my story the seven dwarves are from a mountain kingdom called Goldhaven. (lower left) Unlike the rest of the dwarves who live in underground dwelling caverns, they live in a cottage a few miles away. I’ve done a lot of world-building in the dwarf kingdom. My hero, Ban, is a teen-age half-dwarf (half-human) and the seventh son of the mirror smith of the realm. He casts a forbidden spell of truth on the dwarven mirror ordered by the human queen from the nearby town of Kingston, to earn enough gold to bid on his dwarf sweetheart at the next Spring Bidding, when all 16-year old dwarf females are Paired. Yep, not our world.

And of course he botches the spell, and the mirror screeches out the truth with a grating metallic sound. The queen won’t pay full price but admires the mirror’s frame he’s carved and offers to pay him the rest if he’ll stay and carve her furniture. Things go from bad to worse when Ban befriends the Snow White character, Lumi. He has no clue that the queen will use the mirror for her own insane vanity. And yes, the princess eventually eats the poisoned apple, and our hero blames himself.

As a mage, besides spell-casting, Ban is also a shapeshifter. For a speak peek of his shapeshifting practice, and if you’d like to see the Tolkein map, visit my website. (Link in my profile.)

I’m currently querying agents with the MIRRROR OF TRUTH manuscript. If I get no bites I’ll run a Kickstarter and illustrate it with more than just a map...

Ever after,

Ruth

This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote in 2015, the year I started work on my own retelling of the Snow White story. I highly recommend this book if you enjoy retellings.

SNOW Synopsis:

This Steampunk-style retelling of "Snow White" is set in Wales and London in Victorian times. After his wife dies, a Duke decides to remarry when his daughter turns eleven years old. The new duchess is beautiful and seeks to teach young Jessica—aka Snow—proper manners. The duchess calls herself a scientist and has a laboratory of strange equipment, but others deem her a witch. When the duchess orders a huntsman to bring her Snow's heart—to restore her youth—Snow escapes to London and finds a gang of animal-human hybrids who call themselves the Lonely Ones. Her stepmother manages to find her, and conducts an experiment on her that fails, leaving her in a state of living death for three years. The Lonely Ones find the Clockwork Man, who is an alchemist/scientist/wizard, and he cures her, though Snow is left without a memory of her past. In the end, the love of one of the Lonely Ones serves to restore her memory, and they all live happily ever after.

Like any adolescent, when Snow is living under her stepmother's rule she has little agency. It is not until she escapes that she starts to act based on her own decisions and observations. When she first arrives in London she is fearful, tearful, and tentative. She encounters strange people with animal attributes, and they decide to take her to their lair, because "She's alone, she's lost, and she's seen us" (84). Young Cat, the only female, has cat eyes and sharp fangs, claws, and a tail. Sparrow sports feathers on the backs of his hands and a beak-like nose. Mouser's ears are mouse-like and a tail completes his picture. Raven is tall and handsome, and wears gloves to hide his black feathers. Chauncey, a rat-man with beady black eyes and a long tail, is the group's leader. The author constructs these characters as strange, but not sinister. The author also stops at these five characters, instead of creating a full contingent of seven as in the original tale, perhaps feeling that these five are more than enough characters to juggle at once. Snow's interactions with each one contributes to her growth as a person, as these interactions stimulate her powers of observation and self-reflection.

When Snow asks what they do for a living, Chauncey explains they are miners, but that they pick pockets, not dirt. She displays mixed feelings: "She was certainly in no position to judge them. But they are thieves" (105). She realizes that they cannot hold ordinary jobs wearing such prominent animal features, and begins to learn that morality is not always clear-cut.

When Chauncey says, "No more bringing home strays, you hear? We are not a charity house," Snow makes a judgment about his attitude toward the others: "Snow tried not to smile...It was obvious that their leader cared deeply about them, his gruff and comic exterior belying the deep, almost fatherly affection." When she tells them her story, at first Chauncey wants to ransom her back to her father, who was negligent at best, and did nothing to protect her from her stepmother. Snow begs him not to, and agrees to cook and clean for them in exchange for sanctuary:

She rolled up her sleeves and got to work. And she found something miraculous—in the midst of a cloud of dirt, grime on her knees and hands, scrubbing furiously, Snow was the happiest she had been in years...More, she wanted to impress them. Never in her life had she had to earn anything, never had she been needed by anyone. It was a good feeling to have to work to belong (101-102).

Because she has already begun to like the eccentric group of misfits, Snow is happy to work to earn her place with them, and finally feels she is needed somewhere. She finds herself mirroring the self-confident Dolly, her beloved cook from home, treating young Sparrow like one of Dolly's young charges:

He started to poke a finger in for a taste, but before she could stop herself Snow had whipped out her spoon and rapped his knuckles with it, just like Dolly.

Stung, Sparrow put his fingers in his mouth.

No one seemed to notice or care. So, if Dolly she was to be...

She made her face look stern and put her hands on her hips. "No putting fingers in the pot. Ever. Sit down and I will serve you properly" (103).

Later, she takes on a servant's attitude again, but this time a more subservient one, when Cat angrily states that no one is allowed to enter her room. Snow says, "I'm sorry Cat. Apologizing again, just like the servants at Kenleigh Hall" (106). Her self-reflection allows her to extend this thought and she regrets the many opportunities she missed to praise the cook. She comments on her father's attitude as well: "She thought about her own spoiled complaints to Dolly, and worse, her father's complete lack of comment, praise, or criticism" (107). Snow begins to think about class structure for the first time in her life, seeing things from a servant's point of view, and readers appreciate her growing sensitivity to these issues.

When she gets to know them a little better, she challenges the Lonely Ones for taking advantage of her, expecting a hot meal at whatever hour they decide to wander home. She feels that however they felt about her previous station in life, "that does not make me your slave (110). Chauncey quickly apologizes, and promises they will not make unreasonable demands of her in the future. Her self-confidence, and her sympathy for the underclasses, increases.

When Mouser hears about her stepmother's foul treatment of her, he expresses his concern: "Well, I think you're holding up very well, I'll talk to Chaunce about getting you an allowance—wages I mean!" (119) Snow describes a change in her that begins in that moment, a feeling of belonging and being cared for that she never experienced with her father or stepmother:

Snow was never able to say exactly what it was, but it felt like a weight had been lifted or a dam had broken. It had nothing to do with the possibility of receiving money, and everything to do with the Mouser's recognition of her feelings (119).

This passage highlights that what was missing in her life was an emotional connection with her family members. The Lonely Ones are becoming her new family. She feels "determined to make friends with all of them eventually...And Raven—well Raven didn't say much to anyone. She thought they could be friends eventually, though, if he would just talk with her" (110). Readers guess she has a bit of a crush on Raven. He turns into a love interest, when he opens up to her and talks about his dreams and fears and feelings. She responds sympathetically, and opens up to him as well:

"Raven." Snow put her hand on his arm, "it must be terrible. But—look at me. I'm just a person. I can't talk to the birds. I can't see in the dark, and I can't do anything the rest of you can.."

"What do you dream about?" he asked softly.

"Home. And sometimes I dream that my father really loved me..." (143).

Again, she demonstrates to the reader her lack of a loving parent. Yet Snow shows her capacity to adopt a much different attitude in her relationship to others. She gives the bristly Cat her lovely pocket mirror after she sees Cat admiring it. When she asks Cat if she'd like Snow to comb her hair, Cat says that only "sissy girls" care about how they look. Snow responds, "Don't be ridiculous, Cat. You can be beautiful and strong and scary and still steal like a thief. You have that choice. I didn't" (148). The socially prescribed expectation of her social position demanded that Snow look as beautiful as possible for one reason only: to attract a suitable match in her same social class. In her statement to Cat, she is suggesting that taking pleasure in looking attractive is an attribute worthy to have for its own sake, and to take pride in. She points out how much more freedom Cat has than Snow did in her previous life. This interaction highlights Snow's continued development as a complex, thoughtful young woman, and highlights her desire for agency—to make her own choices in life.

The overall effect the author achieves though the relationship of Snow and the Lonely Ones is two-fold. First, her interaction with these characters adds greater dimension to Snow's character and increases readers' sympathy and identification with her. Second, in addition to furthering her character development, the author takes the opportunity to instill in the reader an awareness of a broader issue—the huge disparity in the economic circumstances of social classes in Victorian times. In this story, the gritty setting of London in that time period can almost be viewed as another character, contributing to the dimensionality of both Snow and the Lonely Ones. In giving Snow a taste of freedom from the constraints of her social class, the author questions the validity of those constraints. And in the end, Snow chooses a Lonely One and adventure over a handsome and charming duke's son. By means of the carefully crafted interactions between Snow and the Lonely Ones, the author succeeds in communicating to the reader the impression that money and position in society will never be important components of personal happiness.

Over the years, people have come up to me and say – Oh, you have such a fairy tale life! And my response is, Yes, I do, but it hasn’t been a Disney fairy tale. Have you actually READ any fairytales? They can be grim at times. So here, in essence, is the Short Version of my fairy tale life:

Once upon a time, I was eleven years old, skipping down an old country road, deep in a forest in Wales, arm-in-arm with my best friend, chanting that refrain from the Wizard of Oz. LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS OH MY and then…. around a bend…. a castle appeared out of the mist… And my imagination took flight!. Only the town was Wales, Massachusetts, and the castle we saw was made out of stucco and painted a hideous pink. It was the entrance to an abandoned, weed-choked theme park. But it was magical - down a dirt road in the middle of the woods, a half-mile from any house-–it was our favorite place to play. I was convinced there were magical creatures peering at us from behind the trees. And my favorite part was a very authentic-looking stone cottage - I imagined it was the cottage of the seven dwarves. I remember light filtering through the windows illuminating a flurry of dust particles that sparkled and looked like magic was about to happen, and it seemed that I might be transported to Somewhere Else if I just closed my eyes...

The memory of exploring this abandoned theme park as a child helped form what I would call my “inner landscape.” Who we are is a sum of all that we have experienced, felt, seen, or imagined, and each of us has this “inner landscape” that we tap into to produce creative work, to make stories, whether in pictures or words. I took pictures of the place when I was in art school in the 1970’s, and this one photo survived…

In 2014 I returned to that place from my childhood, with my(still) friend Judy, who played with me there. As we sat near the ruins of the stone cottage, still there after over 50 years–it was like going on a pilgrimage, through a time portal to our childhood. In a way I never left. That cottage was my safe haven.

Now for one episode of my life as a Grimm fairy tale (and like everyone, I’ve had other life trials and losses.)….A few years after we played in that magical place my beloved horse was killed by a drunken hunter. (I was 16) I entered some very dark woods for a number of years, and won’t go into detail about that. I did find my way back to art, which saved me, and in art school I discovered the fairy tales of George MacDonald, which also helped heal my spirit. I vowed to someday illustrate my favorite—The Golden Key, and did accomplish that in 2012 with 47 scratchboard illustrations. When it went out of print I self-published a new edition on Amazon. I'll post the article I wrote on it down the road.

And soon after finishing the Golden Key I began my most ambitious project— a retelling of the Snow White story. In my first musings, I knew it had to feature a dwarf, but not cute Disney types. I imagined my dwarves to be mythical creatures, not the human variety. They'd be larger, more like Tolkein's dwarves from the Hobbit movies. And there would be a teen-age one, perhaps with a human mother and dwarf father, so that he sees eye-to eye with the Snow White character when they meet and become friends. And then he has to cope with the consequences of having made a magic mirror for her stepmother. It's been ten years since I started the story back in an MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Art, and I finished a polished version recently (summer 2025) and am querying agents. I’ll self-pub if I get no takers. Here is a scratchboard detail of my dwarf character, named Ban.

Words cannot adequately pin down the exact meaning of a metaphor, and therein lies its power. A story and its symbols are absorbed into one’s being. And just as the sparkling particles of dust I encountered might be seen as a metaphor for a childhood longing for transcendence, my reflections on fairy tales, and on magic mirrors, will hopefully yield some interesting thoughts. Perhaps more questions will be asked than answers found. But I will ramble on occasionally.

Next post (in a week or two)will be an article I wrote on a YA Snow White fairy tale retelling— Snow by Tracy Lynn

Thanks for reading!

Ever after,

Ruth

My first post! A little about me and what I hope to write about here….

Words and pictures have always been central in my life. I enjoy reading retold fairytales in many genres—picture book, middle grade, YA and adult titles. I’ve discovered a number of people on Substack posting thought-provoking articles on fairy tales, Tolkein, MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and the re-enchantment of the world. I’ve begun to repost articles I find interesting, and plan to write some reviews of my favorite retellings, as well as occasional thoughts on the themes in the draft of my first YA fantasy—The Mirror of Truth, a reimagining of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. As a professional author/illustrator I’ve created many fairy tales for children— The Twelve Dancing Princesses is perhaps my best-known tale. (The top banner is my illustration in oils from the book) I strongly believe we need more fairy tales and mythic stories in our lives to help us out of the dark woods we wander into.

Find more of my books at www.ruthsanderson.com.