One of the problems with books today is that the literary establishment looks down on genre fiction. If your fiction is fantasy or science fiction or mystery or romance or something else readily classifiable, the thinking goes, it is not literary and therefore inferior. And, of course, modern authors are expected to include any amount of “intimacy” in their novels. So someone like Robin McKinley, who writes fantasy and typically doesn’t get graphic, gets classified as a young adult genre author, which is pretty much the kiss of death as far as “literary critics” are concerned – no matter how good her writing actually is. (She has won a Newbery, though, which counts for a lot.) It’s frustrating.

Anyway, I’m quite fond of genre fiction myself, particularly fantasy and especially retellings of fairy tales, and Robin McKinley is one of my favorite authors. The Door in the Hedge is a collection of four short stories, two of which are retellings of old fairy tales (“The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “The Princess and the Frog”) and two of which could readily be classified as fairy tales themselves* (“The Stolen Princess” and “The Hunting of the Hind”). McKinley is a master of the fairy tale; all four stories feature classic fairy tale imagery and themes. As someone who has unredacted Grimm** on her bookshelf and the whole rainbow of Andrew Lang on her Nook, I LOVE fairy tales and will never get tired of them. I definitely recommend Robin McKinley in general and The Door in the Hedge in particular to fellow fairy tale lovers.

Postscript: A random observation that doesn’t fit anywhere else: The most notable element of these stories is the enhanced role of the female characters (even in “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”; it’s subtle, but it’s there). McKinley is well-known for her dislike of the wilting flower type common in older books (*cough*edgarriceburroughs*cough*), and typically writes strong female characters like Aerin and Harry (short for Angharad). Honestly, as a kid, I never noticed this emphasis – I just thought of Aerin as a hero, regardless of gender. Shouldn’t we all strive to be brave and honest and true, regardless of what dangly bits we do or do not have? And I think McKinley generally feels the same way; unlike Tamora Pierce, McKinley can present a female character without having to constantly remind you that LOOK! A GIRL IS DOING STUFF ONLY BOYS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO! LOOK HOW SUBVERSIVE I’M BEING! (Not that I don’t like Tamora Pierce, but I found the “grrl power” motif in the Lioness Quartet very annoying.)

*The definition of the term “fairy tale” as a literary categorization of the broader genre of “traditional stories” isn’t entirely agreed-upon. Me, I know ‘em when I see ‘em.

**If the wicked stepmother gets forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead, it’s unredacted. If she’s given a stern warning and sent to her room to think about what she did, not so much.

I grew up reading Robin McKinley but never got around to The Door in the Hedge. Reading it this time around reminded me why I love her so much.

Though I love the interpretation of fairy tales and folk tales from an anthropological/cultural lens, reading them as literary fiction has always really bored me. Aside from the painful sexism and thinly veiled allusions to loss of female purity, the archetypal are boring ass figures march along their boring ass roles, princesses being beautiful and helpless (like all women ought to be), and princes are strong and bold and handsome (like all dudes clearly are), and villains are evil out of pure spite... and probably ugly or old (because that is super correlated), and birth order has a crazy impact that I still really don't understand (sucks to be the middle child in fairy tales too).

Without sacrificing the clean, pithy clip of a well crafted fairy tale, McKinley is able to lend her special kind of storytelling to two old stories (Frog Prince and 12 Dancing Princesses) and two new stories in The Door in the Hedge. While the familiar themes are there, McKinley treats her characters with such deft empathy and respect that we come away able to root for them as more than just a prince or a princess. I came away unbelievably impressed by how she could take tiny domestic details and fill them with so much meaning and subtle emotion. McKinley has always been a no-nonsense writer and I loved that as a kid. Now, even more than that, I love the quiet dignity she allows her characters and the elegance with which she writes.

I'm always on the lookout for fairytale retellings, so of course I read this. It was enjoyable enough, but definitely not my favorite Robin McKinley book. There weren't really any extra twists or additions to the two stories that were direct retellings, so they were pretty straight forward and a little boring. Plus, I thought it was weird that one of the stories ends with the princess marrying her first cousin.

Oh how I adore McKinley's writing although I do have to admit that I prefer her longer stories to these shorter ones even though these stories were very good as well.

The Stolen Princess was about changelings ... er, almost as the fae kind of stole a kid from a family (boys in their infancy, girls in their late teens), but didn't quite give a child in return. One of the kids who gets taken in the middle of the night is a princess as the story's name indicates. Both the premise and execution were really good BUT the story didn't quite resonate with me as I would've liked to.
My least favourite story was actually the the first story in this collection - The Stolen Princess. It was good, but I have to say that the second story - The Princess and the Frog stole my heart and that story was definitely way too short. I would usually say that The Princess and the Frog is one of my least favourite fairy tales but McKinley's version was awesome and I was left wanting a story at least three times as long.

The third story - The Hunting of the Hind - was also really good and I think if McKinley had written more, it could've been magnificent. But what I really liked about this story was the fact that the savior of the day was a princess no-one actually seemed to believe in.

And the last story - The Twelve Dancing Princesses - is a story that I've always liked about princesses who dance away their dancing shoes in the middle of the night. McKinley's version was also really good but I think I kind of prefer the original to this one.

All in all, a very pleasant reading experience.

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I don't know what to say about this book. It was boring. I really struggled with it. I really like books full of short stories, I really do, but the stories in this one were WAY too short. Robin McKinley tends to wander off in la la land, and doesn't ever get to the point. I feel like she tried to cram too many events into too short a time frame. In the first story, I wasn't quite clear on what the actual problem was. I liked the characters, I thought the story had potential until princess Linadel disappeared. Then it went downhill from there. The second story was WAY too short. it lasted about ten pages. Most of it the princess is fretting about how to solve her problems, and then all of a sudden, on the last page, Poof, she magically knows a solution. The third story wandered too much. I mostly just skimmed it. It gave too much description on things that needed it and not enough description on things that did (i.e. what the golden hind actually IS). The last story, I was not impressed with at all. The twelve dancing princesses is one of my favorite fairytales, and Robin McKinley ruined it. I did not have the patience to even finish it. I was NOT impressed with this book, and this is last time I will attempt to read a Robin McKinley book just because a lot of people say its good.

This is a collection of some of McKinley’s shorter works. Two are tellings of well-known fairy tales, “The Princess and the Frog” and “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”, and the other two were stories I was not familiar with beforehand, but was equally enchanted with after reading. McKinley has a gift with language, and it’s a pleasure to read her prose. Her deft hands means that the familiar stories are read in new ways, and the new stories feel just as timeless. “The Stolen Princess” was a look at faerieland and changelings I hadn’t read before and particularly enjoyed.

Robin McKinley’s strong suit is not short stories. Her books usually start off slow and take a while to warm up and become interesting, and with short stories, that sort of thing just doesn’t work out as well. While the stories themselves had interesting plots, the way McKinley writes most of them is plodding, to say the least. The first story kept losing my interest, but I know how her writing works, so I continued on, regardless of how bored I was from her initial set-up. With that said, however, the first story is by far the weakest and the stories only get stronger and more interesting as the book moves along, which I really appreciated. Well done on whoever created the chronology for this anthology, because the best stories were put last, so there was only buildup and things to look forward to rather than reading a great story at first and then getting disappointed by the next one.

I’m a huge fan of fairy tales, which is part of the reason why I picked up this book. I very much enjoyed the retelling of the Princess and the Frog. While predictable, it was still an interesting twist on the original tale, and I absolutely LOVED the twelve dancing princesses retelling. It could have been several pages shorter, but it was overall quite well done.

Basically, this is great if you’re a fan of fairy tales and Robin McKinley. It takes a lot to to get through the set ups of most of the stories, but they do have some sort of payoff that I felt was worthwhile. It’s not amazing by any means, nor are these particular retellings must-reads, but they’re great if you’re in need for a fairy tale fix.

Also posted on Purple People Readers.

A fun collection of four fairy tales, two short and two novella length. Two are original, I think, and two retellings. The only one that drags is the novella-length original; her long retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses is quite beautiful and suspenseful and not at all what I would expect a modern retelling to do with a story beautifully strange but decidedly problematic in terms of gender dynamics.

The thing I hate about short story collections is that they're invariably varied in quality.

I will say though that there seemed to be a tendency/yearning to over-describe everything, and to have deep and complex meanings pass between characters unspoken. The stories all have good bones and honestly, The Golden Hind and The Stolen Princess, the originals, were the ones I enjoyed and admired the most. The prose and the narrative discourse was where the book was letdown, for the most part. She's a good writer and this is a good book but again I kind of expected better and 3.7 is maybe a fair rating.

Aradel are animals - which I find a little odd given the context of the first mention. I would have thought it'd be the other way around.

canny 2. NORTHERN ENGLISH•SCOTTISH
pleasant; nice.

durance - imprisonment or confinement.

The Door in the Hedge was a bit different than anything else I've read by Robin McKinley. One thing I love about her writing is that she manages to retain that classic fairy-tale style of writing, but still throw in her original style as well. The first story in the collection was perhaps my favorite, though her retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses was very good, too.

Overall, it was an excellent, light read that felt like you were soaking up an old classic without having to think too much about it...Robin McKinley's books are almost always worth reading!

The Door in the Hedge is written by Robin McKinley is the Big Library Read Digital Book Club via the Toronto Public Library book for the October 17 – October 21, 2015 period. It is a collection of four short stories, divided evenly between the retelling of two fairy tales and two original stories centering on princesses and the fae.

For the most part, I really like most of these contributions. The Door in the Hedge contains four short stories and most are written rather well. Like most anthologies, there are weaker contributions, but I quite enjoyed all of them and they were crafted rather well, although some of the time, I felt that the writing was a tad dated. This collection is far from perfect, but it is rather well done nevertheless.

The Stolen Princess is an original tale when the neighboring fairies kidnap Princess Linadel. She is forced to choose between the love of the fairy prince or her responsibilities as heir apparent. However, rather than having to make such a choice, they ultimately decide to bring the Kingdom of Humans and the Kingdom of the Fairies together as one world.

The Princess and the Frog is a retelling of the fairy tale "The Frog Prince". The evil and sinister sorcerer Prince Aliyander is threatening Princess Rana's kingdom and family. However, when the talking frog she befriends comes between her an Aliyander and his attempt to hurt it, unwittingly freed the cursed Prince Lian, Aliyander's brother. As a confrontation ensues, Lian aids Rana in defeating his brother for good.

The Hunting of the Hind is an original tale when Princess Korah's brother is enchanted by the cursed Golden Hind – it is up to the princess to chase the hind herself. She follows it inside a stone hill where she finds the hind has turned into a beautiful woman. The woman and her brother tell Princess Korah of their imprisonment by a jealous sorcerer and the terms needed to break the curse. Princess Korah was able to free the siblings and was successful in lifting the curse that had struck her brother.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses is a retelling of a classic fairy tale of the same name. When the twelve daughters of the king started mysteriously wearing out their dancing shoe, he investigates and finds out that his daughters are cursed. Apparently, the princesses are cursed to dance with a witch's twelve demonic sons and entrapped them so well that they would be forced to marry her sons. The King sends out an invitation allowing any man to have one of his daughters’ hand in marriage in return for breaking the curse. A weary solider takes up the challenge and was successful in breaking the curse. In the end, he ends up marrying the King's eldest daughter.

All in all, The Door in the Hedge is a well written collection of short stories of princesses and fairies, while turning those stories slightly on their heads.

Love this

Robin McKinley does not disappoint in this fairy tale with fae, princesses, demons, and doors. Her twists on tales I love were a welcome breath of fresh air. The whole book is enchanting and mysterious. I couldn't put it down.