Jackson Pearce’s second book - but her first in the UK - Sister’s Red is out this week and to celebrate, Jackson is having a blog tour and today it’s our turn to host Jackson. She’s written us a piece about why she used Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood to influence Sister’s Red! Enjoy!

The thing I love about re-imagining fairy-tales is no matter how avid or reluctant the reader is about books in general, she comes to the table with a background on the story. Everyone knows Red Riding Hood, everyone knows Snow White, everyone knows Cinderella—everyone knows fairy-tales, if only in their Disney incarnations. I’d venture to say they’re a common thread in everyone’s childhood.

By taking and adapting a story that’s already potentially thousands of years old, a re-imagined fairytale has the opportunity to fuse with the original. Even if you know the original story of the Little Mermaid, when I mention the title you probably think—if only fleetingly—about Disney’s Ariel. That’s really spectacular, in my opinion—that something so old can blend seamlessly with something new.

When it came to actually adapting Little Red Riding Hood and turning it into SISTERS RED, I tried to start at its core—after all, there are thousands of versions of Little Red Riding Hood. One of the common themes across all the versions, however, was a cautionary tale. A warning of sorts to girls to not trust what may seem harmless. I ran with that when envisioning the Fenris—handsome, cunning men who become the worst kind of monster.

Little Red Riding Hood may have been foolish enough to listen to the wolf to begin with, but in many stories it’s her and the grandmother who outsmart the monster in the end. I wanted to make sure my Red Riding Hood was likewise the empowered character—that regardless of mistakes she’d made, she was always ready with a new plan of action and a new goal. I wanted her to be the one with the weapon, not the little girl bolting from the woods.

And of course, there are the smaller details of the original fairytale that I tried to incorporate into SISTERS RED—the red cloaks, their weapons of choice (axes, hatchets, and hunting knives), their relationship with the woodsmen, and their backstory. It was fun sprinkling in the original fairytale, and interesting to see how what would start as a quick-and-easy fairytale reference would often change and shape the story as a whole.

Adapting fairytales, on the whole, has taken much more research than I expected, much more planning, much more sorting through a thousand different versions of the same story. It’s a strange sort of balancing act- you want to respect the original story, but you want to do something new with it…sometimes it’s tricky. That said, I loved writing SISTERS RED—and I hope the March sisters’ story becomes part of Little Red Riding Hood for readers!

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