My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson

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My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson

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Buy My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Category: Children's Non-Fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Reviewed by John Lloyd
Summary: Once more this series looks back at what's gone before, while giving the young writer more than enough stepping stones to take their own literary journey forwards into realms unknown.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 96 Date: September 2016
Publisher: The British Library Publishing Division
ISBN: 9780712356428

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Pity the child these days who never reads fairy tales. The irony in that, however, is that they may well be too busy watching Frozen on repeat to read fairy tales. But read them they should, in some form or another, and of one era or another. They don't all have to go back to the oldest collections, especially as they will like as not be more gory than what, say, Disney or Ladybird Books put out in our youth. They can read a fairy tale from any age, then – and when they're done, they can easily turn to this book, which provides more than enough impetus for you to write your own. Fairy tales do, as it happens, have the ability to last for centuries – but there's nothing quite like giving them a little tweak to get them up-to-date…

The stimuli here suggest a lot more than a little tweak. Following on from the first two books of this author's series of similar volumes, we get blank pages aplenty to make major changes to fairy tales, or sequels or prequels, if not entirely new ones of our own. So it's time to update The Princess and the Pea, with the daughter of the original happy couple needing a test for finding a worthy prince. Here's room to explain why The Frog Prince got to be a frog in the first place. Here's where you suggest what the Sleeping Beauty says about the changes in the world when she's woken after a whole century's kip.

The great things about this book is the simplicity with which it inspires you to go off on your own tangents, following very wide suggestions and small tips on your own creative path, and the simple way it uses a light touch to educate you about what's gone before. So the book is broken down into four major sections – princes and princesses, fairy tale animals, baddies, and rags-to-riches stories – and gives you background into them all en route to getting your writing hand in motion. Some people may find the hands-off approach a little too light a touch at times (abjectives listed as suggestions but never defined; a story structure imposed without the basic point given that it's kind of necessary), and I don't think the 'now write your own fairy story' command was spoken with enough variation or companionship at times – yes, all the approaches to finding the basis of a story are very different, but these things don't just drop on to the page.

However I do think the benefit of books like this is what the reader results with, and there are very few books that can get you creating writing as well as these do. And with dozens of ideas to be constructed and used here, along with quizzes and puzzles, the young reader will have their work cut out. Make no bones out of it, you will not fail but get a lot out of this series.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy. Once I've ticked them off for several typos the other books in the series have avoided.

The Orchard Book of Bedtime Fairy Tales by Helen Craig is a pleasant collection of tales – albeit some with their unpleasant elements intact.

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Buy My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
Buy My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Fairy Tales by Deborah Patterson at Amazon.com.

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