Christopher Healy is a fan of fairy tales. Healy is the author of The Hero’s Guide trilogy, in which the Princes Frederic, Liam, Gustav, and Duncan, (the princes featured in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and Snow White) band together and go on hilarious adventures involving physical danger and personal growth. These books flesh out the personalities of the formerly “cardboard cutout” princes, and mix humor and heroism in equal measure.
Christopher enjoys fairy tales because they are full of the unexpected. “In general, I like how weird they are. So many bizarre things happen in fairy tales. That’s where I started writing these stories. I take the weird stuff as a jumping off place.”
As a kid, his favorite fairy tale was Hansel and Gretel. “I liked that story best because it was one of the few fairy tales where the kids were the heroes of the story. They outsmarted the adults, and that was fun and allowed me to really relate to the main characters,” said Christopher. He noted that children just accept it when strange things happen in a story. Adults are more analytical and read into things differently. “Hansel and Gretel eat someone’s house. As a kid, that’s what happens in the story. As an adult, you might imagine that you’re asking for trouble when you eat someone’s house.”
His current favorite fairy tale is Hans Christian Anderson’s little known Great Claus and Little Claus, which he recently discovered, remarking, “You don’t realize how many fairy tales there are!” Great Claus and Little Claus is a revenge story full of diabolical twists and turns. “I love it because it’s incredibly bizarre,” said Christopher. The story begins with a silly quarrel because Little Claus brags that he has five horses. In truth, he has one horse and the other four were lent to him by Great Claus. The argument quickly evolves into a convoluted tale of tempers and trickery involving a sexton, a farmer, an imaginary goblin, two grandmothers, and enormous amounts of money. Little Claus comes out on top in the end because of his relentless cleverness.
With a ready supply of new fairy tales – and new interpretations – Healy can continue to indulge his appreciation for bizarre plot twists and clever protagonists.
Fuel the fires of your own child’s imagination. Download an interactive fairy tale fromwww.saturnanimation.com.
