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Sarah Mlynowski’s Whatever After Series: Fairy Tales with a Feminist Twist
It always bothered me that Rapunzel just sat around waiting in her tower for a man to save her. Are you really telling me that with all that time on her hands, she couldn’t figure out a plan on her own? Did she really feel like her only option was to brush her hair all day?
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And Sleeping Beauty too; waiting around for years for a prince to kiss her. No kiss should have to bring you back to life. Imagine the pressure that a prince would feel, having to be that guy?
So when my young daughter became excited to read fairy tales, I was hesitant. It felt like most of them went against my feminist sensibilities when I read them aloud to my impressionable daughter. I wanted to teach her to be confident in her abilities and not wait for a prince to save her.
But then I stumbled upon Sarah Mlynowski’s Whatever After series, and suddenly fairy tales took on an entirely new twist—and the opportunity to encourage female empowerment in my daughter became a real and exciting possibility.
See, in these books, Abby and Jonah, a brother and sister team, use a hidden magical mirror in their basement to transport themselves into an array of different fairy tales. Except they don’t go to just hob-nob with royalty or eat as much food as Jonah could possibly fit in his pockets. They go to inevitably teach lessons to the protagonists that leave the classic tale fractured ever-so-slightly, but in a way that leaves you cheering them on. You watch as a character like Cinderella stops waiting for a prince to rescue her and instead opens her own cleaning business, becoming a great success all on her own.
Take for example the latest in the series, Whatever After: Sugar and Spice. This middle-grade twist on Hansel and Gretel not only dives into the idea of greed, but gives it a modern spin that encourages the siblings to figure out their problems for themselves, and not rely on fate, or a handsome prince, to come make it all okay.
From Hansel and Gretel, to Rapunzel, to Snow White, Mlynowski has given readers the chance to see classic characters transform into empowered, self-made heroes—all on their own. (Well, and maybe with a little help from Abby and Jonah, their hilarious and entertaining guides that just can’t seem to stop eating and arguing their way through each and every story.)
Either way, your child is left knowing that they don’t need a hero to rescue them from the kingdom’s worst problems—that is something they can do all on their own.
Has your young reader read the Whatever After series?