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The Korean Cinderella

The Korean Cinderella by Shirley Climo, illustrated by Ruth Heller, 1993.

In this Korean version of the classic Cinderella story, a couple who live in a little cottage have a daughter they call Pear Blossom. Pear Blossom is a lovely girl, and when her mother dies, her father thinks that he should remarry, so he will have a wife to help care for his daughter.

The village matchmaker matches him with a widow who also has a daughter, a girl called Peony. However, after the marriage, it becomes clear that Pear Blossom’s new “mother” doesn’t like her, and her new “sister” doesn’t either. Her stepmother and stepsister are jealous of her, so they nitpick everything she does and make her do all the chores. As Pear Blossom’s father’s health worsens, he is less able to interfere with their mistreatment of Pear Blossom, and the stepmother schemes to find a way to get rid of Pear Blossom entirely.

The stepmother keeps assigning Pear Blossom chores that she thinks will be impossible for her to complete, but various animals take pity on her and help her. A frog helps her to fill a jug that has a leak by plugging the leak, and some sparrows help her to hull a massive amount of rice.

One day, Pear Blossom’s stepmother and stepsister go to a festival in the village, leaving Pear Blossom at home. The stepmother says that she can only go to the festival if she weeds the rice paddies first. However, a huge black ox appears out of a whirlwind and takes care of the task for her!

On her way to the festival, Pear Blossom sees the handsome magistrate but accidentally loses one of her sandals as she gets embarrassed and runs away. The lost sandal helps the magistrate to find Pear Blossom at the festival, and he declares that he wants to marry her.

There is an Author’s Note in the back of the book about the background of this fairy tale, and the author notes that there are multiple Korean versions of this story. There’s also an Illustrator’s Note that discusses the style of the illustrations. It explains about how designs that appear in the illustrations are based on designs from Korean temples, and there is also information about the clothing the characters wear.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

Shirley Climo has written multiple picture books about versions of the Cinderella story form around the world, and it’s fascinating to see how a story that so many of us recognize varies from country to country while still maintaining the same basic pattern. An aspect of this particular version of the story that Climo explains in her Author’s Note is that the animals that help Pear Blossom in the story are sent by a kind of “goblin” called a tokgabi or doggabi. The story itself says this, but in folklore, this kind of “goblin” can represent the benevolent spirit of someone who has died. In this story, the spirit might be Pear Blossom’s mother. This explanation makes sense to me because I remember reading something similar about the Chinese version of the Cinderella story. The story of Rhodopis, which Climo retold in The Egyptian Cinderella, may be the oldest form of the Cinderella story, and it doesn’t have that element of the girl’s deceased mother helping her through trials until she finds happiness, but it does put the concept of the Fairy Godmother from European version of the story in a different light.

This is another children’s picture book where I appreciated the notes from the author and illustrator because they add more depth to the story. When I was a kid, I never read notes like that because I was only interested in the story itself, but notes like this make the book more appealing for older readers.

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The Persian Cinderella

The Persian Cinderella by Shirley Climo, art by Robert Florczak, 1999.

This is a Persian version of the classic Cinderella story.

There is a lovely girl named Settareh, a name that means “star” because she has a star-shaped birthmark. Her mother died shortly after she was born, so she has grown up with a stepmother, two stepsisters and some aunts and cousins. Her father leaves her to the women of the family to raise, but she is often ignored and neglected by them. Her stepsisters are jealous that she is pretty and are mean to her.

Then, one day, her father visits the women and gives them each some money to buy cloth for new clothes because the princes is inviting everyone to his palace to celebrate the New Year. However, in the market, Settareh spends her money on other things and has none left to buy cloth. She spends part of her money for something to eat because she’s hungry, and then, she gives some to a poor beggar woman as an act of kindness. Finally, she finds herself compelled to buy a strange blue jug. Her stepsisters tell her that she was a fool for buying the jug, which has an obvious crack in it and for wasting the money that she was supposed to spend on cloth, but Settareh still loves the little blue jug.

Then, Settareh discovers that the jug has a fairy inside and has the ability to grant wishes! Although her relatives think that Settareh won’t be able to attend the festival at the palace because she doesn’t have anything appropriate to wear, Settareh secretly asks the jug for a special gown and comes to the festival anyway. People at the festival don’t recognize her and think that she’s a visiting princess, and she catches the eye of the prince. However, she leaves the party quickly so she can return home before her family, accidentally losing a diamond anklet as she runs away. One of the prince’s servants finds it and gives it to the prince, who begins to search for the girl who wore it.

When the prince finds Settareh, he proposes to her, but Settareh’s jealous stepsisters scheme to get rid of her and take the magic jug for themselves! Settareh will need the prince’s help to escape!

There is an Author’s Note in the back, explaining more about this version of the story, which comes from The Arabian Nights, and some background information to the story, including a little about the New Year festival of No Ruz in the story, which is still celebrated in Iran. There is also an Artist’s Note about the style of the artwork.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I enjoyed this Persian version of the Cinderella story! I like Shirley Climo’s picture book series showing different versions of Cinderella stories from around the world, including The Egyptian Cinderella and The Korean Cinderella. One of the parts of this story I found the most interesting is that the story doesn’t end when the prince finds the girl who attended his party, as so many other versions of the story do. There is one last obstacle for the couple to overcome, when Settareh’s mean stepsisters use the magic of the jug to turn Settareh into a bird, until she flies to the prince, and he changes her back. I don’t now whether adding one more obstacle to the story enhances it that much, but I appreciated it as an interesting twist. It also resolves the matter of the jug because, while it grants the stepsisters’ evil wish, their wish also destroys the jug, so the wishing is over.

The artwork in the book is beautiful. The artist tried to make the art style as authentically Persian as possible, using models for the characters who were ethnically Persian (Iranian). The artist used a combination of water-based markers, colored pencils, and ink, and pictures are lively and full of color.

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Princess Furball

Princess Furball retold by Charlotte Huck, illustrated by Anita Lobel, 1989.

There was a princess whose mother died when she was only a baby and whose father never paid much attention to her. In spite of this misfortune, she had a happy childhood because her nurse loved her and let her play with other children. She arranged lessons appropriate to a princess with skilled tutors and let the princess learn how to cook in the royal kitchen.

However, when the princess was grown, the old nurse died, and the princess was very lonely. Her father only cared about the money he could get from the princess’s marriage, and to the princess’s horror, he arranged a marriage to an ogre who promised him fifty wagons of silver in exchange for the princess.

Unable to face the prospect of such a horrible marriage, the princess requests a special gift from her father for her wedding. She asks for three dresses: one golden like the sun, one silver like the moon, and one as sparkling as a the stars. She also asks for a special fur coat made of a thousand different types of fur. At first, the princess doesn’t think the king will be able to meet her demands, but to shock, he sets his people to accomplishing the task and presents her with everything she asked for.

Deciding that there is no other option but to run away, she takes the three dresses with her along with three small golden treasures that belonged to her mother: a ring, a thimble, and a tiny spinning wheel. She also takes along her favorite soup seasonings, which she got from the castle’s cook. Then, she puts on the bulky fur coat and flees into the woods.

In the woods, she is found by the hunting party of a neighboring king. At first, they mistake her for some kind of strange animal. When they find out that she’s a person, they take her back to their castle and put her to work in the kitchen. There, they make her do all the messy cleaning jobs. Nobody knows her real name, so everyone just calls her Furball after her strange, bulky coat made of a thousand patches of fur.

The princess always wears the fur coat as a disguise, but one day, she finds out that the young king of this kingdom is having a ball. She slips away from her kitchen duties and dresses in her dress like the sun. When she is unrecognizable as the kitchen servant, she is able to meet and dance with the king. Being herself is essentially a disguise!

When she slips away from the king and returns to the kitchen, the cook has her make soup for the king, and she uses her special blend of seasonings. When no one is looking, she she also puts her golden ring into the king’s bowl. When the king finds the ring, he asks the cook about it. The cook admits that Furball made the soup, so the king questions her about the ring, but she doesn’t explain.

At the king’s next ball, the princess repeats the same performance, this time wearing the dress like the moon. This time, she slips the golden thimble into the king’s soup when she returns to the kitchen. Again, she doesn’t explain when the king questions her about the thimble.

As in many fairy tales, it’s the third time that’s the charm. When the princess shows up to a ball dressed her her dress like the stars and doesn’t have time to completely change when she gets back to the kitchen that all is revealed, and there’s a happy ending!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid in elementary school! I think I read it when I was about 7 years old, when the book was pretty new. I always liked fairy tales. There is a brief explanation at the beginning of the book that the story is a Cinderella variant. This version is very similar to the English folktale Catskin and to the tale of Many Furs or Thousand Furs by the Brothers Grimm.

Like so many little girls, I was fascinated as a kid with the concept of the dresses that resemble the sun, the moon, and the stars. The fur coat made of many animals is a little alarming to me now, but it makes a good disguise in the story. I love the illustrations that show the princess in all of her different dresses and the Furball disguise!

The story doesn’t explain why the princess put her treasures into the soup, but my guess was that she wanted an excuse to see the king again and a way to keep him intrigued about her identity and her relationship to the mysterious princess who keeps showing up to his balls. It’s only after the king decides that he really loves the mysterious princess that it’s safe to reveal her identity.

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Cinderella

Cinderella translated and illustrated by Marcia Brown, 1954.

This is a retelling of the classic Cinderella story, translated from the French Perrault version by Marcia Brown, the author and illustrator of many other classic fairy tales and folktales for children.

As in the classic story, Cinderella is a girl with a cruel stepmother and a pair of spoiled stepsisters, who force her to do all of the work of the house and make her wear rags. Her father never stands up for her because he is too attached to his second wife to oppose her.

When it is announced that the king’s son is holding a ball and that the stepsisters are invited, they hurry to get ready, and they make Cinderella help them. Of course, nobody thinks that Cinderella should go to the ball, and the stepsisters laugh and tease her about it.

When they head off to the ball, Cinderella watches them go and cries. Then, her fairy godmother appears and tells her that she is going to help her. The fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a fine coach, mice into horses, and a rat into a coachman. She gives Cinderella a beautiful dress to wear and a lovely pair of glass slippers. However, she warns Cinderella not to stay at the ball past midnight, when her magic spells will end, and everything will become what it was before.

At the ball, Cinderella charms the prince and has a wonderful time. She is even nice to her stepsisters when she encounters them. They don’t recognize her in her new finery. Everyone keeps wondering who the girl who appears to be a beautiful princess could be. Shortly before midnight, she leaves the ball abruptly and returns home before her stepsisters do. She tells her godmother everything that happened and that the prince invited her to a ball to be held on the next night.

The next ball is also wonderful, but Cinderella loses track of the time and runs away suddenly when the clock begins to strike midnight. In her haste to get away, she accidentally leaves one of her glass slippers behind. The prince finds it and decides to use it to find this beautiful, mysterious girl he has already come to love.

Many young ladies try on the shoe, including Cinderella’s stepsisters, hoping that it will fit them. However, it will only fit Cinderella, and only Cinderella has the other slipper in the pair.

This is a Caldecott Medal Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The story follows the classic Perrault version of the Cinderella story. There are many variations of this fairy tale, but this one is often the best-known. In some versions of the story, Cinderella’s father is also dead, which is why she is left at the mercy of her stepmother and stepsisters, but in this one, he is still alive and is just unconcerned about Cinderella’s treatment. He is never shown in any of the pictures and plays no role in the story.

I enjoyed the illustrations in this book. They’re an unusual style. Objects and people in the pictures are only party defined by pen lines. Many of their edges are more softly defined by color.

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The Egyptian Cinderella

The Egyptian Cinderella by Shirley Climo, illustrated by Ruth Heller, 1989.

Rhodopis is a slave girl in Egypt. When she was young, she was abducted from her home in Greece by pirates, who sold her into slavery. Her blonde hair and green eyes make her look very different from the Egyptian servants, and none of them like her.

Most of Rhodopis’s friends are animals, and in the little free time she has, she likes to dance. The elderly man who owns her sees her dancing and has a special pair of rose-red gold shoes made for her so she can wear them while she dances. However, the Egyptian servants are all jealous of her for getting this special gift.

One day, the servants all leave her behind when they go to a special court held by the Pharaoh. While they are gone, a falcon snatches one of Rhodopis’s slippers and flies away. The falcon flies to the court and drops the slipper in the Pharaoh’s lap. The Pharaoh takes this as a sign from Horus that the girl who owns that shoe is destined to be his wife and immediately begins searching for her.

When he finds Rhodopis, the servant girls protest that she is not Egyptian and is only a slave, but the Pharaoh compares her green eyes to the color of the Nile, her light hair to papyrus, and her pink skin to a lotus flower. In his eyes, there could not be any other girl who could represent Egypt, and her slave status doesn’t matter.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I remember loving this book when I was a kid! I always liked fairy tales and folktales, and I think this was one that was introduced to me by our school librarian, probably around the time it first came out in 1989. For a long time, I was unaware that the same author also wrote other books based on variations of the Cinderella story: The Korean Cinderella, The Persian Cinderella, and The Irish Cinderlad. One of the fascinating things about the story of Cinderella is that variations of the story about a girl (usually, it’s a girl, although there are some variations with a boy) who is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters but who triumphs in the end when she marries a king or a prince, who identifies her as the girl he loves by a lost shoe, have appeared in cultures around the world. The classic one that most of us know is the French version by Perrault, but there are other versions of the story that are older.

There is an author’s note in the back of the book that explains that this Egyptian version of the Cinderella story is one of the oldest known Cinderella stories. The Roman historian Strabo recorded the story in the first century BC. The story is legend, but according to the author, Rhodopis was a real slave girl who married the Pharaoh Amasis in the sixth century BC (although accounts of her vary, and it can be difficult to separate history from legend).