Mixed Magic: Global-local dialogues in fairy tales for young readers(8 Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition)

Mixed Magic: Global-local dialogues in fairy tales for young readers considers retellings and adaptations from a ‘glocal’ context: a framework focused on the reciprocal and cross-cultural exchange between global processes and local practices and their potential transformative effects. The study examines an eclectic range of retellings from the East and West from the 19th century until the present, among them orientalized picturebook versions of Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard; Disney’s animated classics; Asian versions of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid; Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese; and the fantasy films of Hayao Miyazaki. Drawing on theories of globalization, cognitive narratology, subjectivity, and eastern thought, the book reveals new implications for intertextual analysis. This beautifully illustrated volume is the first sustained study of the effects of global-local and East-West interchanges on representations of self and Others in children’s literature and folklore studies.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgments; 2. Table of figures; 3. Introduction; 4. Chapter 1. Understanding glocalization and fairy tales; 5. Chapter 2. Glocal fairy-tale retellings: Reimagining the nation; 6. Chapter 3. "Can we be compassionately blended?": Orientalized retellings of Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard; 7. Chapter 4. East imagines West: Conceptualizations of Western fairy-tale space in the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki; 8. Chapter 5. Mermaids; 9. Chapter 6. Beasts (and Beauties); 10. Conclusion: In these uncertain times: The promise of the glocal; 11. References; 12. Index

Review :
The theory of glocal blending Katrina Gutierrez develops in this far-sighted study of fairy tale and related forms has exciting implications for the study of all children’s literature. Bringing together the breadth of a corpus drawn from across the world and a precise methodology grounded in cognitive narratology, she demonstrates how processes of creative interchange between local and global, and East and West, produce particular “glocal” effects. Awareness of the glocal subjectivities implicit in these effects enables a stimulating, new understanding of discourses of ethnicity, race, gender, and class. The material gathered here is fascinating and subtle arguments about it are presented clearly and accessibly, so the book is not just illuminating but everywhere a pleasure to read. What kinds of meanings emerge from the negotiations between global and local narratives of identity in fairy tales and literature for children? Katrina Gutierrez’s approach to “glocal” transformations of fairy tales highlights their contribution to children’s cross-cultural literacy and to a creative dialogue of East & West subjectivities. What’s new about the book is how it grounds the globalized, Euro-American fairy tale in East-Asian and South-East Asian YA novels, picture books, anime, telenovelas, and “Frog King” tales, inviting us to value the creativity and agency of their “mixed magic.” This is a timely and significantly situated move in decolonizing fairy-tale studies. The sophisticated and passionate analysis clearly demonstrates how the fairy-tale’s teller or adapter's investment in a web of cultural relations can work to re-imagine femininity and masculinity, human agency, and ecology. This is an excellent examination of the way in which children’s literature through the scripts and schemas of the universal fairy tale can reveal that contradictory sameness is not only achievable but preferable over the elimination of difference. I believe that this is not only an examination of children’s literature but also a useful praxis in attempting to navigate the contemporary. Hybridity and mutability need to be fostered in times where demarcation and international relations seem to be at an all-time low.