Rapunzel: A Rebel Fairytale

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The characters and their personalities are the most important parts of my stories, and often the first thing I’m cultivating when I first start working on a story. From the very beginning, Hansel and Gretel were sassy, ungrateful children. The villains of the story. In this particular spread, I wanted them to look so unbothered that someone, an adult, was talking to them, that they didn’t even turn and face them!

I had read many fairy tale retellings where the female protagonists (usually, “Rapunzel,” “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood”) are rewritten as strong protagonists who are able to get themselves out their horrible situations using their wits and action skills. So, when I stumbled upon this new children’s book on Edelweiss called “Rapunzel” by Bethan Woollvin, which is also about Rapunzel becoming an action girl, I just had to get this book and man was this a truly interesting book! Despite all of this, my favourite fairytale would be Hansel & Gretel, just because it’s so creepy. The setting is delightful: a gingerbread house in the middle of the forest, covered in sweets and delicious treats. Most importantly, I loved that after the evil witch captures the children, they get their revenge by pushing the witch into the oven, a fate she had intended for the children. I don’t think I really realised the impact my books were having on children until I started doing more author visits to schools. Each time I tell an audience of children that I’ll be reading ‘Rapunzel’ or ‘Little Red’, I always hear grumbles and groans from the boys, and cheers from the girls. But when I finish reading, they’re all cheering. It’s incredible. I usually push this one step further, and ask the children to give me words to describe the female characters in my books. All the children will give me words such as ‘brave’, ‘clever’, and ‘awesome’. This is what inspires me to keep on writing books! Overall, “Rapunzel” is a great read for anyone who wants to read a fairy tale retelling that features a strong female protagonist! I would recommend this book to children ages four and up since the narrative is easily accessible for younger readers. How would you envisage teachers using your book in their classrooms? Do any activities or ideas spring to mind?

I’m interested in the relationship between your writing and your illustrating. Does the writing come first or the illustrations? How does one affect the other? Do you have a preference for one form over another or are the two inextricably linked for you? I would like to thank Edelweiss and Peachtree Publishers for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. It’s incredibly important to me to challenge gender stereotypes in my books. I’m often praised for writing to empower girls with my stories, but that’s not my aim. I don’t write for girls, I write for children. Writing just for girls only solves half of the problem. I’m inspired to create strong female characters in my fairytales, because I want to create female characters both boys and girls will want to read about. It shows children that females are worthy of being written about. Though I would certainly consider myself to have a fascination with fairytales now, I don’t think I did as a child. I actually found them for the most part, to be rather dull! I was a confident child, who didn’t make time for stories about passive (female) characters. I loved intense stories with vast worlds and well written characters, but to my annoyance, most of these characters were males. Well, my first book Little Red began it’s road to publication while I was still at university. I had just turned 20. Still a student, I was still studying full time, while also working professionally with a publisher to get my book finished. And this wasn’t just the first publisher I was working with, it was the first professional relationship I had within the creative industry. It was a really big deal to me, and I had no idea what I was doing half of the time! I was learning on the job, and trying to pass off that I knew all of the publishing terminology, while secretly googling it later. Creating Little Red was truly a delight, and the chance to do this, full time – as a job, was too good of an opportunity to let pass by. All I could be was resilient! I worked, and worked and worked. I graduated university with first class honours, and my book Little Red was published a few years later. I still have no idea how I pulled it all off!

Bethan Woollvin's version [of Little Red Riding Hood] has a far darker ending - and I loved it. The talented illustrator and writer has taken a childhood niggle as her premise for this bold feminist version of the story: would our caped heroine really have been taken in by a wolf in a bad grandma disguise? ... I won't spoil the ending but let's just say Little Red wraps it up nicely (and warmly) and it has my three year old son thrilled at every read, begging for more. The Times The traditional Japanese folktale about a stonecutter who seeks ever greater prominence and power is retold in a modern, flippant version. Naturally, as I create my stories just with pictures to begin with, my facial expressions and characters tend to be far more exaggerated as there isn’t any text to support the story until a lot later in the process. My characters are also usually made up of very basic shapes, (which is purposeful so that children can recreate my characters with ease) and this means the movement and gestures of the characters are more prominent, and as such, sassier too! Hansel & Gretel is a particularly interesting story to read to children, as it pushes the moral boundaries. Was Willow really a good witch? Were Hansel & Gretel’s actions excusable because they are children? Did they deserve the witch’s pot? This illustration from Hansel and Gretel really made me laugh! I love the children’s surly body language! Can you talk a little bit more about how you develop your stories through the characters’ body language and facial expressions? You can buy Hansel and Gretel, which is published by Pan Macmillan, here!Once the children have had time to talk about or to hear the original story, ask them to retell the story to one another orally. Following this, allow the children time to create story-maps to capture their oral retelling. Don’t get too bogged down in what your creative voice might be. Just keep creating things you enjoy making, and the rest will follow.

Rapunzel is resourceful and brave! She's really quite ingenious, and (dare I say it?) full of spunk. Your artwork is very striking and you tend to use a just one or two bright colours when illustrating your fairy tales. Why is this? What sort of feel are you aiming to achieve? There are so many little hidden gems in the illustrations, like when we see Rapunzel reading a book entitled "How To Defeat Witches." I love those kind of details that make a book special!When I do author visits to schools, I often do workshops too. One workshop that I’m particularly fond of, is a story creation workshop. I read children my books, and with some writing prompts, ask them to create their own story. But the story is to be told completely in pictures! Excited by the prospect of not having to write anything (like they usually would with their teachers!), the children are often very productive, and create some hilarious stories. When asked to then write some words to go alongside their story, the children can’t stop writing! It encourages children to be really creative, and use a different approach to creating narratives. She makes friends with some forest animals, and with their help, she becomes a scourge to witches everywhere. I just love seeing a story where the princess takes action and saves herself! In terms of strong female role models in fairytales, there wasn’t much to go on. The best I could hope for were child eating, hair stealing, evil apple giving witches, and though I adore a female villain, I found myself moving onto other stories entirely. So, I think that my dis-interest in fairytales as a child, actually lead to my interest in changing them as an adult. I’ve always considered myself an illustrator first, and an author second, and I never try to hide the fact that I find writing very difficult. Within my process, there are three distinct parts of creating a book. Story creation, illustration and writing. Beginning with illustration, I usually draw very rough, thumbnail type doodles, documenting what I’d like to happen on each spread of the book. Alongside this, I usually work on some story creation, which I basically do in bullet-point format. E.g. – ‘Hansel & Gretel eat house’. I then continue working on the illustrations and storyline in tangent until the final artwork has been completed. Lastly, with a lot of help from my editor, we ‘write’ the book together, filling in any gaps in the story that I haven’t conveyed with pictures. Bethan Woollvin previously won the Macmillan Prize for Illustration for her first book, Little Red, which was also named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book. This book was recommended to me by our school librarian as an empowered Rapunzel.

Woollvin is a striking new talent with strong retro style illustrations and a simple, witty text. Angels & Urchins What advice would you give to teachers about how to develop reading for pleasure in their classrooms and schools? Personally, I love telling stories just with pictures, as it’s the best kind of challenge. If someone can look at my illustrations, and take away the narrative I’ve pictured without needing any words – I’ve done the best possible job I can as an illustrator. However, as a children’s book creator, I’ve become used to working with words, and if they are being used, they need to be used properly! Today we welcome author and illustrator Bethan Woollvin into The Reading Realm to talk about her series of subversive, witty, dark picture books which are based on classic fairy tales… You can find out more about Bethan and her new picture book, I Can Catch a Monster, here!Have you always been fascinated by the magical world of fairy tales? Did you have a favourite as a child? The text and the illustrations need to work together, not just repeating one another in different platforms. For example, with Little Red, I illustrated this spread of the wolf. I could have written ‘And the wolf made a plan to visit Grandma, eat Grandma, then wait for Little Red and eat her too’. But actually, that’s quite long and boring to read. Instead it reads ‘And he made a plan’, and the reader has to put the information together, to make sense of it. It makes the book engaging for the reader. You can buy Little Red, published by Pan Macmillan, here!