Skip to main content

Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

By

Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin
By Liesl Shurtliff
Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Fiction.

Twelve-year-old Rump, who lived in town were your name determined your destiny, lived up to his name. He was short and unremarkable but he knew if he could figure out his true full name—the name his mother intended to give him but was unable to finish saying before she died giving birth to him—he could be somebody. One day he discovers his mother’s old spinning wheel and his ability to turn straw into gold. What he thought would bring relief to his dire conditions, giving him a way to provide for his sickly grandmother and to him, only brings complications when he has to turn his gold over for any price given—including a princess’s baby. When his grandmother dies, he goes in search for his real name and to find a way to end his curse of the gold to his mother’s homeland and comes across other interesting fairy tale creatures along the way that also get a bad reputation in fairy tales.

Humorous leisurely take on the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale that makes him the hero, not the villain. Fans of fractured fairy tales and Shannon Hale’s works will be pleased to add this to their reading list. Maxwell Glick’s narration has the perfect tone and pace for Rump’s character and is available to listen to on Overdrive.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Blood in the Water

By
Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...
Post a Comment
Read more

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

By DeeDee
National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.
Post a Comment
Read more