Ella

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Kuykendall, Leslee Farish, and Brian W. Sturn. "We Said Feminist Fairy Tales, Not Fractured Fairy Tales!." Children & Libraries: The Journal Of The Association For Library Service To Children 5.3 (2007): 38-41. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Dec. 2013. An established relationship between Cinderella and the Prince before the night of the ball. I'm sorry, but I just never understood it. Cinderella spent one night with a guy and bada-boom boom! Love ⏩ Marriage ⏩ Happily ever after? I'm sorry honey Mendelson, Michael. "Forever Acting Alone: The Absence Of Female Collaboration In Grimms' Fairy Tales." Children's Literature In Education 28.3 (1997): 111-125. Humanities International Complete. Web. 6 Dec. 2013. Soooo I guess I’m gonna be the first one to say that I was a bit disappointed by this version of the book.

Although not strictly a romcom, Ryan O’Connell’s uplifting Just By Looking at Him, published earlier this month, offers much-needed representation to LGBTQ+ people with disabilities – the main character being a gay man with cerebral palsy – while Florence Given’s Girlcrush, published in August, is described by the author as: “queer, hilarious and full of joy”. Matt Cain’s latest novel The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle follows Albert, a closeted 64-year-old postman, as he sets out to reconnect with his former boyfriend. Cain believes the increase in LGBTQ+ fiction is in part the result of “greater visibility”, which he says has “showed the general population that we’re just like them”. When a third tile, “J,” falls, the Council explains that it is basing its actions on the will of Nollop and that any other interpretation will be considered punishable heresy. They write that Nollop was “omniscient” because of his ability to create his 35-letter pangram—a feat like that cannot be replicated or beaten, they declare. This creates a disjointed feel to it because honestly someone who hasn’t read the book would be really confused by the chain of events. The scenes are not well connected between them. The dialogue is rushed and you don’t get the full depth of either characters. Now I know why people made such a fuss when the movie came out. I watched the movie first, so I had no idea how utterly wrong everything was. It totally is not like the book. Just slap on the names and the curse and that's where the similarities end. I must say the book is MUCH better than the movie. The uniqueness of Prince Charmont is equally important to that of Ella’s. While it is incredibly crucial that young women be given an example of what a real heroine should look like—a women with agency and ambition—it is also of the essence that they are shown what it means to be an exceptional man. Male protagonists are just as pigeonholed as female protagonists, albeit, pigeonholed as compassionate heroes (Kuykendall & Sturn 39; Mendelson 120). Still, the male figures of classic fairy tales are put under the same amount of pressure to conform to the standards laid out for their own sex. Levine’s portrayal of a perceptive and feeling male character is perhaps her most astute move toward exposing the oppressive patriarchy that lurks behind the classics. LoveThe third time I read Ella Enchanted, I read it with my husband. We were both touched by the letters that Ella and Char write to each other because that’s how we fell in love, too—writing long-distance messages. Before we met in person, we wrote about all the physical flaws we thought we had and whispered our most shameful secrets in late-night phone calls. I didn’t share his love of baseball, and he didn’t share my love of books (yet), but we felt comfortable gabbing about them anyway because we knew the other person wouldn’t mind indulging us.

These titles include Lily Lindon’s recently published Double Booked, about a 26-year-old woman who realises that she is bisexual, and two queer coming-of-age novels: Cynthia So’s young adult novel If You Still Recognise Me and Henry Fry’s First Time for Everything. It’s a boom reflected in film and TV, too, notably with the release of Netflix’s Heartstopper, based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novel of the same name. The central appeal of this book to me is Ella herself. She’s simply one of the most lovable narrators I’ve ever encountered – spunky in a way that is genuinely endearing as opposed to annoying, endlessly clever and resourceful, capable, hilarious, charming and independent. You may remember similar praises for Aerin in The Hero and the Crown and Cimorene in Dealing With Dragons, and that’s because these girls (along with a few others we’ll be talking about soon enough…) truly shaped my conception of who I wanted to be when I was younger. Charming, intellectually engaging, and filled with fascinating wordplay, Ella Minnow Pea is a cautionary tale about authoritarianism, about the dangers of reading signs and symbols where there are none–and about the irrepressible human urge to speak freely. Questions and Topics for Discussion

Table of Contents

Parsons, Linda T.. "Ella Evolving: Cinderella Stories And The Construction Of Gender-Appropriate Behavior."Children's Literature in Education 35.2 (2004): 135-154. Print. Dame Olga, Hattie, and Olive collectively represent one of the only types of female collaboration seen in fairy tales, which Mendelson refers to as an “evil women’s group” (115). Mendelson notes: Georgeanne Towgate then writes to Mittie, asking for her help. Children under eight are exempt from the statutes, but the school is saying that her son Timmy turned eight prior to when she believes he will actually turn eight, and therefore Timmy has technically been breaking the statutes. Mittie attempts to help Georgeanne, searching for something that will prove Timmy is still seven, but to no avail. Timmy is banished while Georgeanne remains on Nollop.

When Ella’s father announces that he is sending her to finishing school, Ella is forced to leave her home accompanied by two descriptively rude and annoying girls she met at her mother’s funeral, Hattie and Olive. Soon the curse begins to plague her life in new ways, as Hattie finds out about Ella’s curse and commands her about whenever possible. The relationship between Ella, Hattie, and Olive is an important component in the exposure of the original Cinderella’s patriarchal undertones. As the antagonists, the stepsisters are deliciously comic figures. They are such nasty bullies to Ella throughout the novel that it is, perhaps difficult not to cheer Ella’s refusal to forgive them at the end. Still, the social and educational systems that have acculturated Hattie and Olive cannot be fully divorced from Ella’s fate, despite her seemingly magical transcendence of their constraints. (Reimer 36). Female depiction Ella The letters “F” and “B” both fall soon after, and Mittie gains a second offense—again reported by Georgeanne Towgate. The Law Enforcement Brigade (L.E.B.) also starts to do home searches, looking for illegal letters. A professor named Professor Mannheim comes up with a 44-letter pangram, the shortest they have so far. Additionally, Tassie, starts to send anonymous threats to the Council. Now Maggie is an adult, she wants to find out what really happened – if her old certainty stemmed from her struggles with her mental health, or if something more sinister was going on in Blairmore. Maggie is told by one grizzled local, Charlie, that the island of Kilmeray is a “thin place”, where “the distance between this world and other worlds is shortest, the walls thinnest”, and Johnstone plays cat and mouse with the reader’s perception of reality and the supernatural. Deliciously creepy and unsettling. Lucinda’s character arc is a beautiful thing to behold. Not only does she get her “comeuppance” in experiencing her own curses firsthand, but she expresses genuine regret, and she changes her behavior as a result. No more “gifts” of obedience or couples being forced to love each other. She (mostly) drops her self-centered, attention-seeking persona and becomes more authentic and empathetic. Willpower involves pushing through challenges as well as controlling our impulses and emotions. Sometimes this results in repressing our true selves instead of setting them free.

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it's an interesting retelling because the classic cinderella is also endlessly obedient, though she doesn't have a curse on her like ella. she's obedient because of feminine socialization and cultural expectations. this book is wonderful for naming inescapable obedience a curse, as it is.

I’m cursed with obedience as well. When a stranger asks me for a favor—to edit something, maybe, or give advice—I have a hard time ignoring that request. But this realization has helped me recognize how others are cursed with obedience, too, and how easy it is to accidentally take advantage of their willingness to give. It follows Jaigirdar’s first two novels, The Henna Wars – which was included in TIME’s 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time – and Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, both featuring heartwarming love stories between young queer Muslim women. Until now, people like Jaigirdar had “never been given the narrative of happiness,” she says. At birth, Ella is inadvertently cursed by an imprudent young fairy named Lucinda, who bestows on her the "gift" of obedience. Anything anyone tells her to do, Ella must obey. Another girl might have been cowed by this affliction, but not feisty Ella: "Instead of making me docile, Lucinda's curse made a rebel of me. Or perhaps I was that way naturally." Cinder & Ella is a (surprise, surprise!) Cinderella retelling taking place in Hollywood. Only the stepmother isn't evil, the father is alive, Prince Charming is a swoonworthy playboy and Cinderella a fantasy geek. The real villain, besides the awful, I-wanna-strangle-you-bitch Kaylee, is the society. The society that can't show compassion to a girl who lost her mother and was damaged both mentally and physically during the accident that turned her world upside down. Being bullied all the time and feeling unwanted by a family she just got to meet, Ella's only sunshine was her internet friend Cinder. She never met him in person, but she felt like she had known him her entire life. And the best part is (the one I absolutely adored) that the reason it all started was their love for the same fantasy books! I love nerdy protagonists!I absolutely loved the story. It's a great way of showing how the only one who can save you is you, and you have to find the strength within to do it. Sometimes it takes someone else to bring that strength out of you and that's what Char does for Ella unknowingly. After “J” is banned, “D” falls soon after. Ella laments that they will have a lot of difficulty expressing the past tense without “D” and the Nollopians will thus be deprived of their own historical record. The Council also sends out a directive, providing alternative names for the days of the week. Sex. Logan Mitchell loves it, and ever since he realized his raw sexual appeal at a young age, he has had no problem using it to his advantage. Men and women alike fall into his bed--after all, Logan is not one to discriminate. He lives by one motto--if something interests you, why not just take a chance and try?