The Sleeper and the Spindle

kinda wish i read this rather than listened to it because i think there are illustrations which would have been amazing to experience, however i found this kind of boring. i rekindled my love fairy tales and middle grade books but this one didn’t hit for me, i dont think it was particularly memorable and i doubt it will stick with me unfortunately

Always loved the way Riddell's art resonates with Neil's stories, this one wasn't left behind

Book #14 Read in 2018 The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman This is a deceptively beautiful book. The illustrations are beautiful and it seems to be an innocent child book but this is a dark tale of dark magic a la Sleeping Beauty. There is a twist to the well-known legend and it works for this book. This is a must read for fairy tale retelling lovers.

As always, Neil Gaiman offers a refreshing magical tapestry of two age-old fairytales.

I really enjoyed that book

3.5*

If you are looking for the most innovative fairy tale, you will be disappointed in The Sleeper and the Spindle. It's a typical Gaiman creation, flipping some tropes on their head and playing with mythologies. However, it's still a pretty standard tale, just with a queen at the helm instead of a knight. But for kids, it makes for a fun read. The art is also spectacular and pushes the rating for this short book higher.

this should be longerrrrrrr. who would've thought i need snow white/sleeping beauty retelling? beautiful art

That was unexpected but it needed to be a little longer. It felt like it was mostly the readers assumptions that made the story make sense.

A beautiful re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White both in terms of the story and the illustrations.

Dejé una reseña en mi blog, en español: http://natified.com/2015/01/26/libros... I should start by saying Neil Gaiman is my favorite author. I read everything he writes. I don't love everything, but I do like most of the things he writes. The Sleeper and the Spindle is an illustrated book written by Neil Gaiman and illystrated by Chris Riddell. It's only 70 pages long but it's so beautiful. I loved Riddell's style, it fit perfectly with the story. The story goes like this: there is a girl in a castle who has fallen asleep because of a curse, but there's another girl, a princess, in a nearby kingdom who decided to go and break the curse, because it's spreading and someone has to stop it. So she takes three dwarves with her to the castle, to wake up the girl. Things happen. I loved this story. I loved the re-interpretation of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, I loved that there are only six characters but it's a charged story, I loved the drawings and the style of it (all in black&white), I loved the twist (there is always a twist with Gaiman), I loved the words, all of them. I've read 7 books so far (January, 2015) and this is the book I've liked the most, so far. I read it in one sitting, I smiled a lot, I laughed and then I screamed at the end and it was beautiful! I know it's another Gaiman book that I will re-read and re-read (I always re-read Snow Glass Apples, which is a short story he wrote years ago, also changing the story of Snow White and it is my favorite reinterpretation of a fairy tale, ever).

Not at all what I expected. A very interesting take on sleeping beauty with a huge wow factor, not only through the amazing writing style and choice of words but also through Chris Riddells Illustrations. I would recommend it to everyone who want to spend just a little bit of time with a modern fairytale

Amazing art and solid story

Here be spoilers, too many to count, all necessary. Dedicated to their daughters, Gaiman's mesmerizing story, wrapped in stunning illuminated, gothic illustrations by Riddell, deconstructs two iconic fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Gaiman fractures them piece by piece into a heroine-centric world, weaving them seamlessly back together again to create a complete evolution in both stories. The queen, nameless but recognizable by her blackest of black hair and crimson lips, awaits her marriage and is disappointed by her life after her poisoned ordeal. The sleeping princess in the tower, recognizable by her hair "the golden yellow of meadow flowers" (38), is also poisoned, dreaming an endless dream of her future and awaiting rescue. However, neither queen nor princess are quite what they appear to be. The queen has a suit of armor slouching against the wall in her bower and is about to get married to the prince that woke her from her own sleeping spell. She is underwhelmed by her fate post-sleep, and her resigned metaphysical angst with the reality of her marriage is evident in her affectless face, the golden skulls on her bedclothes, how she darkly notices the wedding preparations outside the castle, "Every hammer blow felt like a heartbeat" (14), each beat mapping the way to "the path of her death". Meanwhile, her dwarfs, numbering only three, go out under the "unpassable" mountains that separate the queen and princess' kingdoms, seeking "the finest silken cloth" for their wedding gift to the queen. They are confronted at their favorite inn with horror stories of a sleeping death that is relentlessly seeping over the land from the Forest of Acaire. They are told of a beautiful princess locked away in a tower covered in thorns and roses, that as long as she sleeps the kingdom will sleep. The only one way to break the spell by "the usual method" (16)...a kiss. Many men and women have tried to reach her, they lament, and all have failed horribly. The Inn's regulars, from the innkeeper to the sot to the fat-faced man to the pot-girl, all fear that it is only a matter of time before the entire kingdom is wrapped in deathless sleep. So the dwarfs race back to tell their tale and their Queen, hearing the siren song of the Hero's Quest, answers it with glowing, visible relief. She abandons her wedding festivities, kisses her sulky prince goodbye with promises to return, dons her mail and heads to the sleeping kingdom. They reach the inn which has succumbed to the plague, all the sleepers covered in spider webs, as the tallest dwarf points out "The cobweb spinners do not sleep" (26). Approaching the Forest of Acaire, they encounter further strange, spider-web encrusted sleepers that become animated by the queen's presence yet not awake, and have all the slow, mumbled menace of zombie hoards. The queen, herself asleep for a year, appears to have a magical immunity to the witch-sleep that is poisoning everyone in its path. And so the band makes their way to the tower, through a hallucinatory mental fog where the queen is visited by spectres of her father, mother and her stepmother, who evokes the original Grimm tale by wearing glowing orange, fiery hot iron shoes that nonetheless do not burn anything on the path. Confronting the impenetrable thorns and skeletons of failed rescuers surrounding the tower, the queen does not take up her sword. Instead she calls for a tinder box and lights her own orange flames to destroy the brambles and enter the tower. There she is confronted with the sleeping princess and a hag who watches over her. And in a magnificent subversive turn, the queen kisses the princess awake. And to take the story to the ultimate sticking place, Gaiman gives voice and dark power to the damsel, who is the witch waiting to be awoken after vampiric years of siphoning off the life force of her subjects. The hag is the actual princess, bowed and knotted with age but wielding the one weapon that can rid the land of their cursed princess. The spindle. And the queen has to decide how to use it. There are no passive, singing Disney princesses here.

The audiobook was enchanting!

i'm...confused?

A darker fairytale I wish I'd had growing up as it is far better than a princess simply waiting to be rescued. Instead, it is women helping and rescuing one another as it should be and women making their own choices.

** spoiler alert ** Un twist interessante alla storia di Snow white e Sleeping Beauty. Non me lo aspettavo I disegni sono molto belli, mi sarebbe piaciuto che la storia fosse più lunga, però decisamente piacevole.

A clever and surprisingly sinister fairytale retelling about making difficult choices which aligns to your true narrative. While the worldbuilding was vague given the short length, I love how Neil Gaiman condenses universal and human themes into an easily understandable story. Similarly, I also enjoyed the fairytale motifs which are developed in a way that made The Sleeper and the Spindle felt like something new. With amazing illustrations by Chris Riddell, this is a pretty enjoyable book to read during my lunch break! (3.5 stars out of 5)

Me gustó que haya utilizado el concepto de cuentos antiguos y los haya mezclado aquí con un par de cambios en lo que a género respecta. Las ilustraciones son una genialidad, lo leí en nada y lo disfrute mucho.

Ok now that is a fairytale I can get behind. I love it. I want my niece and nephew to read it. I want all their friends to read it. I want a movie. So, yeh - I recommend it.

More of a 3.75 stars.

3.75 This was a cool take on a classic fairytale or of two classic fairytales ❤️

Read for my Potions O.W.L 2020 #magicalreadathon2020. Prompt - Shrinking Solution: book under 150 pages. Career - Auror.