Girls: Life Isn't a Fairy Tale

A collection of dark, funny retellings of 7 classic and familiar fairy tales, giving young adult readers a new perspective for navigating everyday challenges.

"Bold, sharp and written with deceptive simplicity,and heightened by Schaap's ominous black-and-white illustrations, this is an absorbing, slyly sinister collection for 11+.” —Guardian

These are no damsels in distress, but young women of flesh and blood - who certainly don't need rescuing. In these 7 famous fairy tales turned into enchanting, inspiring and sometimes hair-raising stories for today's world, you’ll find girls with their own dreams and desires, bravely facing problems that are both relatable and daunting and fighting to overcome them.

• A miller’s daughter with a special gift decides marrying a prince wasn’t such a good idea after all.
• A determined girl gives up on trying to kiss a frog.
• A fearless heroine comes face-to-face with a not-so Big Bad Wolf.
• A monstrous princess, held captive on a deserted island, yearns to break free and find her true place in the world.
• Two sisters, abandoned by their father, wander lost in the big city, until they meet a pair of very helpful old ladies.
• A young maid finds something terrible in a locked room while she is cleaning the Reverend’s house – then the Reverend arrives home.
• A forgotten young girl learns to finally let go of her sleeping big sister and live her own life.

From the author of the international bestseller Of Salt and Shore, and translated by the award-winning Laura Watkinson, these reimagined fairy tales are funny, feminist and achingly true to life.

Annet Schaap is one of the Netherlands' best-loved authors and illustrators. Her debut novel Lampie won four prizes in the Netherlands and Flanders, including the Golden Pencil for the best Dutch children's book of the year, was translated into twenty languages and was the first translated book to ever be shortlisted for the UK’s Carnegie Medal. It is also available from Pushkin Children's Books.

Laura Watkinson is a full-time translator from Dutch, Italian and German. She has also translated many titles for Pushkin Children’s Books, including Jan Terlouw’sWinter in Wartime, Tonke Dragt’s The Letter for the King and Annet Schaap’s Of Salt and Shore. She lives in Amsterdam.