Our Fairy-Tale Book Club Pick for September 2021 is:
House of Salt and Sorrows
by
Erin A. Craig
Join us in reading this fairy-tale retelling! In September, Mary and Elizabeth will each share a review of this novel. Then, they will discuss the book and share their discussion here. You can join the discussion as you read by joining our Facebook group!
Keep reading for more information about this book and the fairy-tale which inspires it.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
House of Salt and Sorrows is a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” or “The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes.” The fairy tale type of the ‘Danced-out shoes’ is ATU-306, and arguably the most well-known of such tales is that collected by the Brothers Grimm. You can find the full text of that fairy tale here.
If you are interested in “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and would like to read more about it and the various forms and retellings of this tale, you are welcome to read Elizabeth’s undergraduate thesis: “The Nature of the Dance.” It is a bit outdated in terms of current fairy-tale and folklore scholarship (she notes: I did write it as an undergrad back in 2008-2009. That was over 10 years ago!), but it contains a lot of information regarding this tale type and some of its modern retellings.