Next Quarter’s Book Pick

Towering (first published 2013) is a YA novel with a modern magical setting, and is a retelling of the German fairy tale “Rapunzel.” The Grimm fairy-tale is arguably the most well-known version of this story, but it is based on an earlier Italian tale, “Petrosinella” (“Parsley”), in Giambattista Basile’s collection of fairy-tales. The “Rapunzel” tale falls within the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type 310 (ATU-310, The Maiden in the Tower).

You can find the full text of the Grimm version of “Rapunzel” here, a side-by-side comparison of the 1812 and 1857 versions of the Grimm tale here, and an annotated version of the tale here. If you’re interested in the earlier Italian tale by Basile, you can find the full text here.

Although you can find Flinn’s Towering just about wherever books are sold, we recommend that if you’re looking to purchase the book, you consider supporting a small bookshop, either by buying directly from them or by visiting bookshop.org for your purchase (an online bookseller which shares a significant portion of their profits with small, independent bookstores). Your local library is also a great place to look for the book, and may very well have an ebook option for you, as well.

Towering is sometimes categorized as one of the books in Flinn’s Kendra Chronicles series (it’s somewhat oddly listed as part of the series in some places and as fully standalone in others). You do not have to read the previous Kendra Chronicles books prior to reading Towering; it is a fully standalone book. If you would like to check out the books in this ‘series,’ however (all fairy tale retellings), they are Beastly and Bewitching. You can find all three bundled together on the Kindle store here. Published after Towering in the series are also Mirrored and Beheld.