New York Review of Books Review

YOU DON'T HAVE to own a knitted pink cap or the collected works of Roxane Gay to find the sexual politics of fairy tales troubling. Among the lessons fairy tales impart: Upward mobility is possible - if you're a ravishing beauty ("Cinderella"). Women don't need to talk - or breathe, really - as long as they are physically attractive ("Snow White"). Abducting women is a viable path to romance ("Beauty and the Beast"). The nonconsensual kissing of coma victims is a great way to meet your mate ("Sleeping Beauty"). Pretty retrograde, even in the post- Hillary era. Which is why recent retellings and mash-ups of fairy tales tend to give the Grimm brothers universe a feminist makeover, or at least a feminist sheen. Perhaps you remember Princess Fiona in the "Shrek" films, who had kung fu skills to rival Bruce Lee. Or Cinderella in Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods," who helped slay the giantess - in part by directing her birds to distract her. In the recent live-action "Beauty and the Beast," Belle is an inventor and a proponent of female literacy (though she still falls in love with her kidnapper, so it continues to register high on the creepiness scale). The newest entry into the empoweredprincess genre is "Frogkisser!," by Garth Nix, who previously wrote the Old Kingdom series. "Frogkisser!" centers on a young princess named Anya who has to save the kingdom from a wicked sorcerer. To do so, she has to talk with dogs, ride an itchy magic carpet, rescue her sister's fiancé and kiss a pondful of frogs. Midway through the book, as Anya sets offto confront a coven of witches, one character asks her, "What kind of princess are you?" "Not the kind that needs rescuing," Anya says firmly. The revisionism doesn't end there. Three of Snow White's seven dwarves are female. And the prince she's trying to rescue? Well, he's handsome but not "all that clever." The audiobook is narrated by the actress and novelist Marisa Calin, who does a fantastic job. She has a British accent, which somehow makes all fairy tales 26 percent better. Her upbeat tone is wellsuited to the book's jaunty style and amusing quests - such as the search for a magic lip balm needed for proper amphibian kissing. My only complaint is that the book dragged a bit in the middle. I got lost trying to keep track of all the adventures and characters: "Now which is the half-otter, and which is the newt?" I'd ask my kids as we listened in the car. In my experience, keeping multiple characters straight is one of the few drawbacks of audiobooks in general. "FROGKISSER!" COMES several years after the actor Chris Colfer started to publish his own fairy-tale-inspired books with a girl-power twist. Colfer's series the Land of Stories follows a pair of 12-year-old twins who are magically sucked into a book of fairy tales. (My kids and I are on Vol. 3 of six of the hardcovers.) In Colfer's books, damsels are rarely in distress. Goldilocks, for instance, is a sword-wielding warrior and Sleeping Beauty hasn't slept in years because she's working tirelessly to reform her kingdom. Colfer's new audiobook, "The Land of Stories: A Treasury of Classic Fairy Tales," is related to the series, but also a departure. It doesn't feature the adventuring twins, but instead is a straightforward collection of fairy tales. Twenty-five stories from the Grimm brothers, Hans Christian Andersen and others, are retold and tidied up a bit by Colfer. I recommend it for three reasons. First, Colfer - an actor most famous for playing a countertenor teenager on "Glee" - is a wizard at voices. In "Henny Penny," he gives distinct, birdlike cadences to a duck, a goose, hen, rooster and a turkey. His yawn from Goldilocks was convincing enough to make me yawn in the driver's seat. Second, I want my sons to know the original fairy tales, and not just get them filtered through reinterpretations. We live in a world where kids ingest the parodies before the real thing. My children have seen multiple "Twilight Zone" takeoffs (on "Futurama," for instance), but have never watched an episode of Rod Serling's show. I suffer from this too. I knew the Puss in Boots character from "Shrek," but embarrassingly had no notion of the original tale. (Which contains another useful moral: Blatant lies and fraud are the key to success.) Which brings me to my third reason, which is that fairy tales are great conversation starters. Not so much for the lessons they are trying to impart, which are often appalling, but as a way to spark interesting questions. When listening in the car, my kids and I talked about whether Jack is morally justified in stealing gold from the giant just because the giant is a terrible being. Also, does the maiden in "Rumpelstiltskin" owe nothing to the dwarf for his hard work? Perhaps not her firstborn, but at least a token? As I mentioned, Colfer has cleaned up the tales a bit. In terms of rawness, they fall somewhere between the Grimm and Disney versions. For instance, in the Grimm version, Cinderella's stepsisters chop offa toe and a slice of heel to fit in the slipper. Disney's "Cinderella" has no gore at all. Colfer's compromise: The stepsister "crammed her foot inside the slipper so tightly it started to bleed." Colfer has also, thankfully, leftout the truly horrible Grimm stories, like their tale "The Jew in the Thorns," about a miserly man who is sentenced to death. Not even Disney could make that palatable. But even when softened and redacted, listening to fairy tales can be demented, disturbing fun. A. J. JACOBS is the author, most recently, of "Drop Dead Healthy." His next book, "It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree," will be published in the fall.