First Chapter Friday: 5 YA Fairy Tale Books We Love
YA fairy tale books have historically been reliable hits for First Chapter Friday. There’s something about fairy tales that we just can’t get enough of. Maybe we like the comfort of something familiar, maybe we like to see how much of the original (or, sometimes more likely, Disney version) we recognize in an author’s reimagined story. Thomas Foster (author of the perennial AP Lit favorite How to Read Literature Like a Professor) writes about the pervasiveness of fairy tale allusions in the literary canon, and it calls to mind a reference in one of the many literature introductions we’ve read over the years to the fact that we, as humans, crave both novelty and familiarity.
No matter how grown up our high school students wanted to appear, the mere mention of a Disney movie still elicited enormous, childlike smiles. Thankfully, YA fairy tale books are not only easy to find, in some cases, they are really good.
We have a hunch that this will be the first of many posts about these YA fairy tale adaptations since, in our research for today’s post, we added another dozen fairy tale books for teens to our TBR, but for now, here’s what is currently topping our favorites list.
5 YA Fairy Tale Books to Check Out
A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer
We could not.put.down. this retelling of Beauty and the Beast (which just so happens to be our fairy tale favorite). When Harper gets pulled off the streets of Washington, DC, and into the fantasy world of Emberfall, she has a whole new set of problems to add to a life that already includes family drama and cerebral palsy.
Prince Rhen has been cursed by an enchantress to repeat the summer he turned 18, and oh, by the way, he also regularly turns into a vicious beast who destroys his own kingdom. As Prince Rhen, his guardsman Grey, and Harper try to navigate a host of troubles, they quickly realize it falls on their shoulders alone to save the kingdom of Emberfall from destruction.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
This novel is not a retelling of a classic fairy tale, it’s a fairy tale original. In Kelly Barnhill’s delightful novel, Xan is a witch who lives in the forest with a Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon named Fyrian. The Protectorate portrays her to the sheltered townspeople as a terrifying monster who demands a yearly sacrifice of the community’s most recently born child.
So every year, as the Protectorate prepares to make a sacrifice, Xan prepares to rescue the abandoned baby she finds in the forest. One fateful year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby named Luna, setting in motion a series of events that involve flying paper cranes, a mad woman trapped in a tower, an enmagicked girl, and the startling realization that the Protectorate is not what it seems. This middle-grade YA fairy tale book is a great choice for middle school students and struggling readers at the high school level.
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
We didn’t initially realize Shannon Hale’s novel is based on a lesser-known tale from the Brothers Grimm, but once we did, it made perfect sense. The novel definitely feels like it came from the world of fairy tales. When Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, is betrayed on a journey to marry the heir to the throne of Bayern, she learns to fend for herself in a world nothing like the royal court in which she grew up.
When Ani was a young girl, her aunt helped bring out her ability to speak to animals, and as Ani fights for her life in Bayern, those abilities become a blessing rather than the curse her mother saw them as. The story is full of adventure, romance, and action, and as a bonus, it holds great appeal to middle school readers (an audience often caught in the middle between middle-grade and young adult novels).
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
Like The Girl Who Drank the Moon, this is an original fairy tale, not a retelling. Alice and her mother have spent their lives on the run from bad luck (like the time Alice was kidnapped by a redheaded man), and when Alice’s mom disappears and her grandmother, famous for writing a collection of dark fairy tales titled Tales from the Hinterland, dies, Alice must set off to visit the mysterious Hazel Wood, the name of her grandmother’s massive estate in upstate New York.
It turns out the Hinterland was not an imaginary place, it was real, and Alice must learn more about it and her mysterious grandmother to have any chance of finding her mother. This one’s kind of creepy (more Brothers Grimm than Disney), but the fairy-tale vibes make it a little less “eek!”
The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
This is one of Steph’s FAVORITE YA series (and it’s a rare case where the quality remains high throughout instead of dropping off precipitously after Book 1). The series starts with Cinder, telling the tale of Cinder, a cyborg mechanic in New Beijing who gets hired to fix the handsome Prince Kai’s android while also dealing with her (wicked) stepmother and the letumosis plague sweeping through the city. As the novel progresses, we learn about Queen Levana from Luna (yes, on the moon) who plans to marry Prince Kai in order to take over the Earthen kingdoms unless Prince Kai can find the long-lost Princess Selene.
As the series continues through Scarlet (about a girl in a red hoodie with a wolf for a friend), Cress (about a girl trapped in a podship with very long hair), and Winter (about a beautiful girl being oppressed by a very vain mother-figure), Cinder collects a quirky yet lovable band of friends and allies who must work together to save Earth from a Lunar takeover. Part sci-fi, part dystopia, part romance, part action adventure, all fun, the series keeps readers turning pages and was one of our most successful First Chapter Friday recommendations.
What have you discovered in the world of YA fairy tale books? Do you or your students have any favorites from this genre that we should add to our TBR lists? Reach out to us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works.
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to our monthly First Chapter Friday Nearpods: we send out FIVE free quick and easy First Chapter Friday activities each month using high-interest YA books we think you and your students will love. Looking for other YA books to suggest to your students or use for your own FCF activity? Check out the YA book section of our website for all our recommendations.