Oof

.

For reasons I can no longer recall, we bought Patrick the Stripping Warrior. And it's great! Honestly, probably the best LDS-themed picture book I've ever read. It's about a rambunctious kid who intends to "be reverent" at sacrament meeting and fails and fails and fails. Then he has a moment of paying attention, hears about the "stripping warriors," turns a new leaf, then interrupts sacrament meeting the most ever by stripping down to his underwear and a tie around his head to declare his newest bestest good intentions.

The book is written with an economy of words; simple, repetitive pacing (in the best way); and real characters that are easily to empathize with and laugh with (at). It's a great picture book! You should get it.

Amazon tells me that I purchased Cinderella CTR the same day. Perhaps because it's from the same publisher? I have a vague sense that I already knew Patrick was a winner and was buying it for that reason, but also picked up this second book just to support a nascent LDS publisher (Halemark Picture Books) and because I am an optimist. (Ends up there was at least one other book they had put out, but I just found that out tonight.)

I hate to speak poorly of the dead---especially a great guy like Rick Walton who not only wrote many great books but was also a selfless mentor to many, but this book is a disaster. It includes a couple great innovations, but trying to combine a fairy tale with LDS culture/theology has resulted in a feminist nightmare. It'll really make you take your local Mormon feminist more seriously, let me tell you.

(Aside: although I've owned the book over eight years, I've never read it. When the 3yrold found it tonight, it took me a while to even process its existence. I think we never read it because the boys never cared [I think the baby chose it because Girls on the Cover---score one for representation] and when I opened it up, it was just too dern wordy for my taste in picture books.)

To simplify, let's just go through the story. You know it. What's Rick doing with it? (Some of which he might not have done in the final draft had he been working with a larger company with a better editing department and not just good intentions?)

So we start with mom and dad, respectively, the very best ward activity director and very best Relief Society Enrichment leader ever. (Cinderella herself is on some medieval basketball squad, an innovation of the illustrator's.) They both die in a tragic merry-go-round accident and Cinderella is sent to live with a very, very, very distant relative (both in blood and geography). She's not allowed to bring anything with her, but no one notices her CTR ring.

So far, so good. I like the ditching of the stepmother angle, in part because it redeems the father. Then we get to some traditional awfulness from the three women she's now living with. The text succeeds in making them ridiculous as well as horrid. So far so good.

Actually, no! This was the first upsetting thing, and the sole upsetting thing that I fullstopped reading to talk to my daughter about.

After we're informed of the awful crap Cinderella has been subjected to, we read

But Cinderella did not complain. Her parents had taught her to do her best, no matter what the situation, and that all would be well in the end. When she as tempted to rebel, she would look at that little ring on her finger, remember her parents' advice, and get back to work.

Nononononononono!!! Sometimes standing up for yourself and rebelling IS the right thing, Cinderella! You deserve better and you have the right to say so and act for your benefit!

Cinderella stays up late to work on her dress from scraps (although her, um, new mother?, laughs every time Cinderella hints she would like to attend the ball, she's never said no, so Cinderella can proceed without being disobedient. (Phew.)

And that's what she does. After they leave, Cinderella gets dressed (and, in contrast to the days of makeup the other two younger women have been layering on, "touche[s] herself lightly with makeup") and walks barefoot to the palace.

This is my favorite innovation in the book: no fairy godmother. I suppose you could argue that character is a powerful woman ergo feminist etc etc, but I like this self-contained Cinderella much better.

When Cinderella arrives, the prince sees her and is immediately struck:

She glowed. And that smile, so pure. And that dress, so simple, so modest, and yet so elegant.

That made me laugh. And that leads to a possible semiredemption one could argue for this book. Maybe it's satire? Some of the future lines I'll complain about definitely might be.

But: I don't care.

This is a book for young children (honestly, this is a book for young girls) and they're not going to see satire if satire indeed is what it is. (Which I doubt.)

Anyway. Let's move on.

Somehow, her relations not notice her dancing with the prince most of the night, which is fine if problematic given the rules o' Cinderella (the story, not this version of the character).

The prince is a decent person and they have a lovely time. He's the first to notice her ring and inquire of its meaning. Then,

When the clock struck eleven, Cinderalla ... remembered something her father had told her. "The Spirit goes to bed at midnight."

So she takes off running. The prince, having failed to ask her name, sends guards after her. But

Cinderalla could run and not be weary, and the guards could not.

One guard, bent over panting, is smoking a cig. The other has somehow not spilled his glass of bourdeaux.

See what I mean? Is that satire? Is this a sincere attempt to teach principles? It's clearly humor, but What Kind of Humor Is It? I don't know. I'm just grateful there were no cupcakes at the party.

Anyway, the prince sets off, asking everyone woman in the country what CTR stands for. After the "sisters" guess "Catch That Rhinoerous" and "Cats Taste Rotten," the prince "[turns] to leave and then something [makes] him stop." So he asks are there any other young ladies, yada yada.

So the prince asks her to marry him and, this is good, Cinderalla says, "Whoa! We've just met!" The prince, "stunned," suggests dating. She says have her home by twelve. And then we'll get married!

"I can't do that," said Cinderalla sadly.

The prince was double stunned. "But...why? Why? I love you already, and I know you will learn to love me."

Cinderella looked at her ring, and then explained to the prince the kind of man she planned to marry, and where she would marry him.

The prince was crestfallen. He was not that man. The palace was not that place. But then he smiled. "May I at least take you out for pizza and a movie?"

"I would like that," said Cinderella.

Anyway, they had a good time. "But did they live happily ever after?" Oh, ho, ho. If she becoming queen and he becoming "the second best Ward Activity Director ever" doesn't answer your question then you are bad at reading!

And this gets to what this book does best and worst all at once.

There's a lot of respect for the reader. The text doesn't shout out the Mormon Elements---it lets its readers read between the lines.

But that element lets a lot of the book's problematic elements---elements concurrent in Mormon culture---pass by unremarked upon, even confirmed and reemphasized.

Ultimately, Cinderella CTR is a paean to flirt-to-convert. Cinderalla uses her feminine wiles to get both a baptism and a temple marriage to a rich guy.

(Snide comment: this book must have been a big hit with the Mormon girls whose babydaddies were getting MBAs when this book hit shelves.)

It's a wildly disappointing book. Parts of it are fresh and smart and fun (the illustrator does much work here, herself), but the less-so parts are so much less so, I rather feel we need to get rid of this book before it pollutes our daughter with sex/religion equivalencies and iffy notions of what being a strong woman entails.

Which is a bummer. A failure of editing, methinks, and one that results in such a gaping missed opportunity, one can only frown and sigh and think of what might have been.

[posted unedited: complaints/corrections welcome]