Games and Free Books Galore for National Tell a Fairy Tale Day!

National Tell a Fairy Tale Day is here again, and that means lots of fun freebies and games from Brittany Fichter and her posse of authors. The first online event I attended for this was the Entwined Tales Launch Party in 2018. While most of these fairy tale celebrations have been done on Facebook in the past, this year's took place entirely on Brittany's blog, making it less interactive than the previous ones due a lack of live post and comment notifications. Participating authors included Brittany Fichter (of course), Laura Greenwood, Melanie Cellier, Rachel Rossano, Abigail Manning, Mary Mecham, S.R. Nulton, and Celeste Baxendell. Additional authors who did not contribute to the blog events offered free or deeply discounted editions of their books. I managed to complete all twelve of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books just in time for this auspicious occasion, but I'll be writing more about that on Sunday.

My favorite activity from this year's posts were the quizzes because they were quick, interactive, and I was able to do most of them without leaving the page. Brittany Fichter's post included a quiz to determine what kind of Fairy Godmother you would be, and I got Motherly Wisdom. I learned from Laura Greenwood's post that I would probably not survive a fairy tale. Oh well, there's always someone who needs to be rescued! I did pretty well on Abigail Manning's fairy tale trivia, but that's mainly thanks to having completed the Fairy Books so recently. Finally, I learned from Celeste Baxendell that my fairy tale alter ego is a Silent Hero. Other fun activities included printables, crossword puzzle, and fairy tale style mad libs.

One post that I found particularly impactful was Mary Mecham's post, which spent a great deal of time discussing the importance of disabled princesses and how to portray them in fairy tales. She recommended several books that went through sensitivity readers to properly depict disabled characters in fairy tale adaptations. Mary brought up a good point about how many fairy tale characters end up temporarily disabled on their journey such as getting blinded by the villain or losing limbs and usually have these things restored to them by the end through magic instead of learning to live with it. On the one hand, the whole point of a fairy tale is the ability to imagine having things that we could never attain in real life, but on the other hand, it's important to be considerate of people whose lives divert from the average person's and understand that they can live out their happily ever after in a way that might look different from someone else's.

I added about a dozen new books to my collection today, which doesn't give me a lot of time to recover from all those Fairy Books. While I will be reviewing those over the next few months, there are a few that I've already read and can recommend right now. Melanie Cellier's box sets containing The Secret Princess, The Mystery Princess, The Desert Princess, The Princess Companion, The Princess Fugitive, and Happily Ever Afters are an amazing deal that give a fantastic introduction to her vast world of the Four Kingdoms and beyond. J.M. Stengl's discounted Faraway Castle Box Set contains three of my favorite fairy tale retellings that combine the best of classic storytelling with contemporary settings. Though I haven't read Poisoned: Snow White's Story by Mary Mecham yet, I'm eager to see how a disability-empowered version of "Snow White" would play out.

Here at The Princess Blog, we celebrate fairy tales every day, and it is for that reason that I am excited announce that my blog has been selected by Feedspot as one of the 40 Best Fairy Tale Blogs and Websites! This is an absolute honor that I owe to my readers for supporting me through their clicks and shares. I'm thrilled to be a resource for the most up-to-date princess content and share my opinions on new and old media alike. Please continue sharing your recommendations and thoughts with me, and I will continue to post about them and keep up the momentum. Have a truly magical Fairy Tale Day, and let me know in the comments what your favorite fairy tale or fairy tale adaptation is!