Sonderbooks Book Review of Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter

Reviewed October 20, 2003.
Scholastic, New York, 1997. 32 pages.
A Sonderbooks’ Stand-out of 2003: #8, New Picture Books

When I looked up Sleeping Ugly, by Jane Yolen, on Amazon, it informed me that people who liked Sleeping Ugly also enjoyed Rumpelstiltskin’s Daughter. So when Rumpelstiltskin’s Daughter turned up on my son’s book order, I ordered a copy, and, sure enough, I loved it.

In this version, after Rumpelstiltskin tells the miller’s daughter that he wants her firstborn child, that he will “be an excellent father. I know all the lullabies. I’ll read to the child every day. I’ll even coach Little League,” she replies that she’d rather marry Rumpelstiltskin than the king. “I like your ideas on parenting, you’d make a good provider, and I have a weakness for short men.”

Rumpelstiltskin and the miller’s daughter escape down a golden ladder (spun from straw), get married, and have a daughter of their own.

One day, when Rumpelstiltskin’s daughter uses a curl of spun gold to buy something, word gets to the king. He whisks her off to his palace and demands that she spin straw into gold.

Rumpelstiltskin’s daughter is too clever for that greedy old king. She puts into place a plan to cure the king of his greed and set things right in the kingdom. This is a delightful twist on the old tale, and tells how things should have been.

Reviews of other books by Diane Stanley:
Bella at Midnight
The Silver Bowl
The Cup and the Crown

Reader comment: An anonymous reader gives this book 5 stars.

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter*

by Diane Stanley