Product Description

A series of contemporary fairy tales populated by wolves, witches, snakes, and an entirely new breed of heroine.

In this Brothers Grimm–meets–Bridget Jones collection of linked stories, Danielle Wood introduces readers to Rosie Little, a thoroughly modern Little Red Riding Hood who offers her sharp, rueful take on life, love, and everything in between.

Rosie knows better than most that some men are wolves at heart, that the snake in the grass is to be avoided, and that fairy-tale endings are usually, after all, only fairy tales. And yet stout-hearted Rosie reassures us that there are ways out of the deep dark forests of our own making in these survival tales of teenagers deflowered at parties, a young journalist who misses the chance to write a front-page story because she’s busy flirting with a married man, and two women who must cope with the loss of their babies.

A brand-new take on the age-old fairy tale, Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls will appeal especially to readers like Rosie, with “boots as stout as their hearts, and who are prepared to firmly lace them up (boots and hearts both) and step out into the wilds in search of what they desire.”

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #512880 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-08
• Released on: 2007-08-08
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .72 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 275 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Linked anecdotes about the perils of young womanhood from Australian author Wood trendily play off of antediluvian diction and antiquated women's advice columns, but actually possesses some hard-won wisdom. Divided into themes such as virginity, truth, art, commitment, marriage and loss, the tales treat the predictable muddle of female experience, though in the feisty literary persona of not such a "good girl." Indeed, the first story, "The Deflowering of Rosie Little," finds the narrator, at 14, eager to look up Latin words in the dictionary used in sexual relations, losing her virginity in the most demeaning fashion at a party to a coarse lager lout who offers her a popular cocktail for girls called "Rene Pogel" (read it backward). In another wacky tale that goes off the rails into reality, "Rosie Little in the Mother Country," the narrator, now 17, is sent for a long visit to her childless godparents' house back in England, where the joyless, emotionally numbed couple finds Rosie's sexual vivacity unnerving and finally insupportable. Despite corny sidebars on penis sizes, pubic hairstyling, and "Nominative Determinism" (you are what you're named), Wood addresses real issues: domestic violence, abortion and the desire to be married with children, among others. What emerges is a sense of destiny for Rosie, a woman who works hard-as a newspaper reporter and an assistant purser on an American cruise ship, among other things-and senses intuitively that a life of heartstrings' unraveling is surely worth a pull or two.
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Review
“Rosie, a Little Red Riding Hood type with lace-up Doc Martens instead of scones, narrates this story collection for the smart, strong female who can’t help getting into trouble…Wood’s prose reads as powerful, funny, and real…Rosie may have ‘a difficult relationship with the word eclectic,’ but that’s what this book is. In a good way. Grade: A-“
—Entertainment Weekly

“…pretty irresistible…this is a gorgeous edition, a compact hardcover that begs to be read under a blanket while sipping a steaming drink spiked with something dark and a little dangerous…Wood has a knack for translating everyday moments into bewitching, detailed images that are at once classic and thoroughly contemporary.”
—Bookslut.com

“The book is fun, tightly-packed, and powerful. Women of all ages will love and treasure the stories it tells…Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls is an excellent read.”
—The Feminist Review

“…emotionally pitch-perfect…[The stories] are funny and moving, and original enough to cover long-trampled territory like virginity and domestic abuse and seem new…get it and you’ll have the smartest book at the beach.”
—Santa Cruz Sentinel

“Wood’s collection of linked short stories makes a delightful trek through the life of bad girl Rosie Little…A clever and wickedly amusing character…Wood’s writing is succinct, elegant, witty, and wonderfully suited to the form. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal STARRED review

"…quirky and playful, sort of a girl-power Lemony Snicket collection, albeit with significantly less comic miserablism…a modern collection for the kind of girls who wish chick-lit protagonists were generally cleverer, had more diverse interests, and could discourse on ‘nominative determinism’ with a (relatively) straight face.”
—The Onion’s A.V. Club

“Rosie Little is sassy, feisty, and simultaneously, beguilingly naïve.”
—West Australian

“Wood’s stories have the appeal of the ordinary — the pains and pleasures that all modern girls and women will recognize…And she has a talent for descriptions so accurate that we are by her side in an instant, laughing in recognition of exactly what she means. She is wry and funny and unpretentious — we trust her voice implicitly.”
—Sydney Morning Herald

About the Author
Danielle Wood’s first novel, The Alphabet of Light and Dark, was short-listed for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the Best First Book category (Southeast Asia and South Pacific Region) and nominated for the 2005 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Wood is also the recipient of the 2002 Australian/Vogel Literary Award, Australia’s richest prize for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of thirty-five.