The Korean Cinderella, by Shirley Climo (our review)

Calvin's rehash:
"It's about persons and ox and fruit. It's about Cinderella. They're mean to her. They make her do mean work. But the frog helps her fill the jug, the sparrows help her polish the rice, and the ox helps her pull out the weeds and then he eats them up. Then there's a band and then they're mad all over again. Then a man pulls out he shoe that was missing and he wants to marry her. There's a picture. They're getting married and they have a wedding."
"I love the book because I love the frog and I also love the ox."

My own thoughts? It's a fine book—the illustrations are beautiful and the writing is good. Why do I sound unenthusiastic? Really I'm not a big of most of the old fairy tales, particularly the Disney-fied ones. Cinderella is one of the books Calvin enjoys hearing again and again, and he also has the book on tape (a hold-over from his dad's childhood collection, and one that I'm certain I had, too, only on record), and at first that seemed like a grand thing. It is, after all, from the days of yore, and I tend to like vintage, eh? But the more I listen to the story, the more I am disappointed by it. Cinderella is gentle and kind and never loses her temper, and the story has a happy relatively ending, but it bothers me that she's entirely reliant on the good will of a fictional fairy godmother and an equally fictional prince charming to make it out of her oppressive life situation. Deductive moral of the story? You'd better have a fairy godmother and small feet or else you're up a creek. I'm sure I'm missing the forest for the trees—the moral of the story, after all, is that kindness is rewarded and evil loses out, right?—but something about the antiquated nature of the story line makes me cringe for girls everywhere.

That being said, I'll freely admit that I am likely over-thinking this, and I have no plans to snatch either the book or the tape out of Calvin's regular rotation. Some day we'll just have to discuss the other options that should have been available to Cinderella, like the doors opened by hard work put into a good education.