Kate Crackernuts. Wicked stepmother ruins the princess and heir to the throne (turns her pretty face into a sheep's head), and ugly stepsister, instead of thanking her, says, "You know, Mom, I never asked you to do that for me, and frankly it was kind of shitty of you. I think we're done here. Come on, kid, let's go fix you up." She tosses a veil over her poor bleating stepsister's horrid head and off they go, until they find a castle with two convenient princes, one of whom is being seduced by fairies and on the point of death. Kate cheerfully takes over, is practical and clever all over the place, and breaks the enchantments on both the prince and her sister, and it all ends in a double wedding because the prince's brother has fallen in love with the formerly sheep-headed sister (while Kate was being clever, they were off wandering the palace grounds communicating with nods and notes and sign language) and the rescued prince has fallen in love with Kate, because even though she's an ugly stepsister she is obviously MADE OF AWESOME.

I really want this to be Disney's next princess movie.

Love the story ... but you know, if Disney gets hold of it, Kate would get prettied-up at the end.

It sounds to me like she gets prettied-up in the story.

Kate is never prettied up. She's uglier than her pretty stepsister at the beginning, she is prettier-by-comparison (but still objectively ugly) while her stepsister has a sheep's head, and when she fixes everything up her stepsister is back to pretty and she's back to ugly. And she still rescues the boy and marries him.

Oh, right, Kate is the non-sheep head one.

A little wool-gathering going on?

JZ - that sounds a lot like my favorite folk tale Taterhood, though Tatterhood gets prettied up at the end because the prince tells her some nice things and stuff.

I really want to get a Master's in Children's Lit with a focus on folk tales, fairy tales, and legends.

So, Dan's bday is today, and I therefore had time to finish the review of Feed I've been tapping away at in spare (HA!) moments for a week.

[link]

Erin, that sums it up well. One minor (really, really minor) point - "feed" has a third meaning - a news feed (old-style reporting usage, but also in there).

Nice review, Erin! I'll pass it along.

In Order of the Phoenix news, I have realized that this book does not have a plot. Seriously, there is no plot. Things are just going on in an order, but there's no structure to the story. On a re-read, I appreciated how the Triwizard Tournament really helped structure GoF, so it's more obvious that there isn't necessarily any driving narrative momentum in this book. Yes, Voldie's out and he's looking for something, but...what is Harry trying to accomplish? What are his goals?

I am enjoying the book more than I think I may have originally because of the characters (although Umbridge is still THE WORST), and I think Hermione is particularly awesome in this one, but it's just...so weird. This book has no plot.