This afternoon, as part of our Black History Month film festival, we showed 1997’s Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The color-blind casting process led to a diverse finished product that our patrons really responded to. Librarian Krishna Grady introduced the film, and talked about the casting director and how producers set out to find the best person for each role, no matter their skin color. This led to a pleasingly diverse royal family with Queen Whoopi Goldberg and King Victor Garber acting as parents to Paolo Montalban as Prince Christopher. Add in the phenomenal vocal talent of Bernadette Peters, Whitney Huston, and Brandy, and its no wonder our patrons responded so well to the film! Their extremely positive reactions made me think about the many, many Cinderella films available to children’s librarians today for programming purposes. There are too many to list entirely, but we can talk about a few!
Of the Rogers and Hammerstein adaptations, I remember loving the above version as a child. I also loved the decidedly less diverse 1965 version, starring Lesley Ann Warren, Ginger Rogers (!), and Stuart Damon, which my mother grew up watching. You can even see the original version, which starred a young Julie Andrews in one of the cheesiest made-for-tv movie sets of all time, from 1957. They hold a sparkler in front of the camera while her transformation is occuring! It’s magical.
If musicals with real people are not your cup of tea, there’s always the classic Disney animated film or the upcoming live adaptation of that film starring the incomparable Cate Blanchette and Helena Bonham Carter (though the 2015 version, as far as I know, will be without songs).
Those looking for a Cinderella with agency and a mind of her own would do well to check out 1998’s Ever After, in which a feminist Cinderella (here named Danielle) schools her Prince on the plight of his people and the power of the written word. That movie also features a delightful turn by Anjelica Huston as the evil Stepmother and Leonardo DaVinci’s character plays the part of the fairy godmother.
Of course, all of these movies are based on the same fairytale, which most of us are familiar with through the work of Charles Perrault. There’s a Caldecott-award winner based on a translation of his work, and too many picture books to list. The “Cinderella story” has been found all over the world, making for a wonderfully diverse list of books to pair with any of the films above. For older readers, there’s Newbery Honor-winning Ella Enchanted (skip the dreadful film adaptation, no matter how winsome Anne Hathway is), Chinese Cinderella, Cinderella: As If You Didn’t Already Know The Story, and many more!
What did I miss? What is your favorite Cinderella book? How about your favorite Cinderella movie?
Monica Edinger
I do a large Cinderella unit with my 4th graders and among other things I have them read the Chinese version, Yeh Shen, talk about it, and then this year we watched the independent film Cinderella Moon. (http://cinderellamoon.com/) Really recommend it.