Poisoned Apples by Christine Heppermann

Most of us are aware of the story in which Snow White bites into a poisoned apple and falls into a deep sleep…but why does she bite into it the first place? Well, the apple looked beautiful and shiny and it was presented to her by someone who seemed trustworthy. This small but powerful book of poetry (which I first read about on the Beth Fish Reads blog) examines the difficulties women face in learning who to trust and how to trust themselves.

The poems play on familiar fairy tales, myth, legends, and other story tropes that have been told and re-told around the world over centuries. It explores the menace of the predators and soul crushing experiences that await women (and specifically young women), turning some of these stories inside out. And while sometimes these predators are men, there are other snares that lay in wait to compromise a woman’s sense of self including: frenemies, crushes, the advice in women’s magazines, eating disorders, and self-doubt. The poems are accompanied by eerie black and white photo illustrations.

Here is a sampling:

• “Vindictive Punctuation” uses the guise of a grammar book passage to outline a teen’s quest for beauty, envy, and sadness over unrequited affection.
• Miss Muffet is not content to eat curds and whey; she goes on a diet in “Thumbelina’s Get-Tiny Cleanse–Tested”
• “A Brief History of Feminism” uses the game “Simon Says” to tell illustrate sexual coercion.
• “Assassin,” which addresses competition among women, provides the point of view of a villainess who feels she must take down all of the other women in fairy tales for her own survival.
• “Red-Handed” shows a Little Red Riding Hood who is willing to go all the way with the Big Bad Wolf, spurning the idea  the Huntsman would show up to rescue her.

There was a time when this type of poetry might have been presented to grown women because the subject matter is quite mature. Even the poems set in school or the ones that reference places and movies that are popular with teens in aren’t juvenile and would resonate deeply with adult women who are familiar with these aspects of contemporary teen life. I recently read about the publication of new translations of Grimm’s fairy tales in which the violence that was in the original versions has been restored. Over time the cruelty of these stories was watered down to make them suitable for young children, a group that was probably not the audience for the tales in older forms. In her Author’s Note, Hepperman comments on how the men that published these stories (figures such as the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault) get credit with their creation while scholars think women were probably the original tellers of these tales.