Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister

You may think that you know the truth about Cinderella, the ugly stepsisters and the Prince - but you are wrong. The Cinderella story is one of the most commonly told myths around, and it has been retold in many operas, plays and books. It was the worse case of sibling rivalry ever! There are many Cinderella movies .
Like all fairy tales there is wisdom beyond what appears to be a simple children's story. Gregory Macquire seeks to enlighten us about the "truth" of this myth but setting the story in 16th Century Holland. We follow one of the ugly stepsisters "Iris" as she and her mother and daft sister land in Holland after being chased out of England for vague reasons. Learning how the mother connived to survive, and how she eventually ends up in then household of Cinderella fills out the story. The story is made richer by interweaving a story of an artist and his apprentice. It seems that young Iris has the artist's "eye" and a conflict develops from her urges to become an artist and survive and help her mother.
The tulipmania of the Dutch Golden Age played an important part in this book, as did the bubonic plague.

And Cinderella is just not what she seems.

(photocredit: By Extracted by: diego_pmc (Cinderella (1865).djvu) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)