Customer Reviews

Mirror, Mirror: Forty Folk Tales for Mothers and Daughters to Share

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One must always take notice of any new work by Jane Yolen, especially someone like me who adores fairy tales. This collection of tales expands one of the most commonly explored themes in fairy tales--mother and daughter relationships. Yolen and Stemple include tales that present the dark relationships and the wonderful ones between mother and daughter. I recommend this book to anyone who is exploring this theme whether or not they are avidly interested in folklore. These tales present this relationship from various cultures and times that will inspire thought and discussion. Plus, it will just be fun to read with your mother or daughter.

This is a good collection of grandmother/mother/daughter folktales [some well known, and some not-so-well known], but I found reading Yolen and Stemple's [often insipid and flawed] commentary a little tiring. Their dialogues only start to shine when they stop talking about folktales, and start talking about themselves, their daughters, mothers, and grandmothers.

Stories are grouped into thirteen "themes": Cinderella, Good Girls/Bad Girls, Bad Seeds, Sex and..., Persephone, Really Good Mothers, Hero Mothers, Grandmother, Rapunzel, Caring Daughters, Mothers-in-Law, Snow White, and Mixed Messages.

The author of well over 200 books, Ms. Yolen is an internationally acclaimed author who has brought insight and ingenuity to her works. Ms. Stemple is the co-author of five of her mother's children's books.
Now, the pair celebrate the mother/daughter relationship with a collection of folktales old and new, well-loved and little known. Throughout each section of the book Ms. Yolen and Ms. Stemple engage in lively and revealing conversations as they share their impressions and memories of the stories, which present a wide spectrum of family life from conventional to unconventional, from devoted daughter to ungrateful child, from loving mother to wicked witch.
"Cinderella," an all -time favorite, is presented in both French and German versions as well as its Russian incarnation titled "The Wonderful Birch." An ensuing conversation between the editors emphasizes the fact that most "Cinderella figures are strong-willed young women" and that the tale holds mixed messages, such as "Do not share. Do not be fair. Fight for what is yours."
And so it goes from Aesop's "The Crab and Her Mother" to the biblical story of Ruth plus fascinating stories from India, the Sudan, China, Scotland, and Czechoslovakia.
Readers may be happily surprised at the issues these stories raise and the conversations they engender.

- Gail Cooke

The genre of fairy tales has been tamed over the years to the point where they are just considered innocent stories for children and nothing more. Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi Stemple bring back those fairy tales and look at the originals and variants from all over the world that show that these stories are many things, but they are not for small children. In Mirror, Mirror mother and daughter take a look at the fairy tales that shaped the past of motherhood and the relationships between mothers and daughters and discuss them in light of modern day motherhood and mother/daughter relationships. They discuss everything from abuse to abandonment, coming of age to marriage, rage and love, sex and death. A great book for mothers and daughters to read together to look at their relationships through the "mirror" of the past and to get women talking about each other, their relationship and themselves.

This book is made up of a selection of fairy tales under a certain theme (fiction), followed by a discussion between mother and daughter about the implications of the stories both in the past and today (non-fiction). The later ended up being the real meat of the book, even if the fiction made up the greater amount of pages.

The stories spanned everything from discussions of sex in fairy tales whether on the part of the mother, the daughter, or even once the grandmother, to the different types of girls (and daughters) whether good or bad, caring or abandoning. It also covered the different roles of the mother, whether caring or despising, envious or prideful of their daughters, whether they were biological, step, in-law or foster mother. They discussed all of the main heroines of women's fairy tales and the ways we view ourselves through them whether mother or daughter: Cinderella, Snow White, Persephone, Rapunzel. And, of course, they discussed all of the mixed messages fairy tales can bring.

It was very interesting reading about the tales through the viewpoint of this particular mother and daughter: Jane Yolen gave the view point of the Baby Boomer generation, while Heidi Stemple brought in Generation X. They both talked of their mothers - whether biological, in-law or foster - and discussed their experiences raising daughters, Heidi is currently raising a teenage foster daughter, plus a toddler biological one. They talked about the fairy tales in relation to their own lives and each others, holding up these mirrors to compare and to discuss all the different aspects of womanhood and motherhood. They used the tales as a vehicle to open a dialogue on some typically tough topics of discussion - whether those be premarital sex, old age and death, partner abuse (whether physical or emotional), drugs and growing up in an ever changing America for women.