"When I used to read about fairy tales, I never thought I would end up in the middle of one." 

For our second week of Alice in Wonderland Month, Drew and Cassie are taking a look at the 1999 TV film starring Tina Majorino, Whoopi Goldberg, Miranda Richardson, Martin Short, Ben Kingsley, Gene Wilder, and many, many more. This adaptation of the Alice story sticks very faithfully to the original Lewis Carroll book, but also adds a few Looking-Glass characters and introduces a lovely framework that gives meaning to Alice's journey. We discuss the movie's strange use of the looking-glass, the amazing opening credits, the addition of the extra Looking-Glass characters, Alice's journey, the unique interpretation of the Caterpillar, and much more! 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

"Believe it or not, we are in your head!" 

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser as we begin our Alice in Wonderland month! In this episode, Drew and Cassie discuss Alice, the 2009 TV min-series from Showcase and Syfy starring Caterina Scorsone, Kathy Bates, Andrew Lee-Potts, Matt Frewer, Colm Meany, Philip Winchester, and Tim Curry. This Alice is a contemporary judo instructor, and her Wonderland is reimagined as a dystopia injected with elements of sci-fi and fantasy. Alice finds herself wrapped up in plot to take down the Queen of Hearts, who has been kidnapping people from Alice's world and sucking out their emotions to sell to the people of Wonderland. In addition to discussing this fascinating version of Alice's circumstances, we talk about the movie's design choices, the new functions of the various Wonderland characters, our opinions on Mad March, the funky timeline, the incorporation of The Walrus and The Carpenter poem, how excited we both were to recognize Matt Frewer, and much more! 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

It's time to let the snow melt away and head down the rabbit hole - and through the looking glass, too! Drew and Cassie are back from hiatus to give their final thoughts on The Snow Queen and, as always, talk about our ideas for how we would retell the tale. Then we begin our discussion on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Cassie gives us a fascinating glimpse into the importance of Carroll's works in the history of children's literature before we discuss our opinions on the original Alice books. Then we explain what criteria we'll be looking for in our Alice retellings, and we reveal which movies and books we'll be discussing throughout the month! 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

"The lack of resemblance to The Snow Queen never bothered me anyway." 

Look, we like Frozen. But is it a retelling of The Snow Queen? Drew and Cassie are here to sort it all out! Disney's 2013 animated film tells the tale of Elsa, a princess who is about to be crowned queen, but is also grappling with hiding her secret magic powers of ice and snow. These secret powers have estranged Elsa from her sister, Anna. But when Elsa's powers come to light, she flees, and Anna must journey up the North Mountain to try to bring Elsa back and end the magical winter she has accidentally brought upon the kingdom. We try to find as many connections as we can, and still deliver the full Of Slippers and Spindles Disney episode treatment by talking through the movie, discussing the Broadway musical, touching on the sequels and spin-offs, and wrapping up with the theme parks. Plus, find out what story we will talking about next! 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

"The more you see of evil, the more evil seems limitless. I guess the same goes for good, but I haven't seen as much of that." 

In our fourth week of discussing The Snow Queen, we are talking about Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige. This 2016 YA novel follows the ventures of Snow, a seventeen-year-old girl who has spent most of her life in Whittaker Psychiatric. Snow's life turns upside down when the boy she loves is pulled into an alternate world and as she follows him, Snow learns that she is from this alternate world as well. Not only that, but this world's wicked tyrant king is Snow's real father, she has magic powers, and she is involved in a prophecy that will allegedly determine this world's fate. To put it mildly, we have some strong opinions on this one! We share our feelings on the story's twists, the novel's pacing, the unresolved storylines, the trio of romantic interests, and much more! 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

"Loving something doesn't mean that you own it." 

It's a very special episode!! For the first time in six and a half years, Drew and Cassie were together in-person, and we got to record this episode sitting at the same table in the same room! This week we're talking about our third adaptation of The Snow Queen, Robbergirl by ST Gibson. This retelling is unique in a couple ways, primarily because it shifts perspective to that of the robbergirl, here named Helvig. When Helvig and her band find a young woman named Gerda in the forest, they bring her back to their camp and into their way of life. As the secrets of Gerda's past slowly unravel, Helvig's own history comes to light as well, and the two women develop a romance that can only be interrupted by Gerda's determination to continue on her quest to find her missing brother. This creative revision of the story is independently published and can be easily found for purchase online! 

Join our community! View all of the benefits of joining our Patreon including the Official Of Slippers and Spindles Book Club, exclusive polls, monthly bookmarks, Zoom hangouts, and more! https://patreon.com/ofslippersandspindles 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

"If you wake me up during the summer, I'll make you suffer." 

This week, Drew and Cassie are joined again by Cassie's brother, Matt, to talk about Snow Queen, the 2002 Hallmark mini-series starring Bridget Fonda, Chelsea Hobbs, and Jeremy Guilbaut. This version recasts Gerda and Kai as young adults who fall in love when Kai is hired to work at Gerda's father's hotel. Their romance is interrupted by the arrival of the Snow Queen, who spirits Kai away to force him to piece together a magic mirror, sending Gerda on a journey through the domains of spring, summer, and autumn in order to bring him back. This series is a nostalgic favorite of Cassie's, and she advocates passionately throughout the episode in its favor, and we all have fun picking on some of the lighter elements and analyzing some of the stronger elements of this retelling! 

Join our community! View all of the benefits of joining our Patreon including the Official Of Slippers and Spindles Book Club, exclusive polls, monthly bookmarks, Zoom hangouts, and more! https://patreon.com/ofslippersandspindles 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

"She had believed that because someone needed saving they were savable." 

We begin our month discussing The Snow Queen with middle-grade novel Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu. This book's protagonist is Hazel, a fifth-grader who is having a tough time in her life at the moment. This is exacerbated when her best friend, Jack, suddenly changes... and then disappears. Hazel embarks a complicated journey through an enchanted forest to rescue Jack from the Snow Queen - and comes across a few other Hans Christian Andersen stories along the way. We discuss the book's title, the decisions to change Gerda and Kai's names to Hazel and Jack, the inclusion of a different Kai, the many pop culture references, Hazel's experiences with the other Andersen stories, and even have some realizations along the way! 

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Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

It's time to let the curtain fall on Into the Woods and start to get icy! We start off by working through some final thoughts on Into the Woods, including discussion of the musical's ultimate message, our feelings on design concepts of the show, and a few extra personal experiences we forgot to mention. This all culminates in our assignment for the month: fancasting our dream versions of Into the Woods - you won't want to miss our legendary ideas for who should play the Witch, Cassie's clever casting for the stepsisters, or Drew's choice for Granny/Cinderella's Mother/Giant. Then we start our journey into December's fairy tale with a recap of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. Plus, we reveal which books and movies we will be reading and watching throughout the month! 

Join our community! View all of the benefits of joining our Patreon including the Official Of Slippers and Spindles Book Club, exclusive polls, monthly bookmarks, Zoom hangouts, and more! https://patreon.com/ofslippersandspindles 

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We love to hear from you! You can reach us at [email protected] 

Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com 

It's our 50th episode! We're here to “stop and take stock,” just like Cinderella did while standing there stuck on the steps of the palace. In this next episode about the 1987 musical Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, Drew and Cassie take a look back. As part of our podcast's premise, we traditionally set criteria each month in order to compare the various fairy tale retellings. Since Into the Woods includes four separate fairy tales, we pulled the criteria from the our previous months covering Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk to see how Into the Woods holds up! Did we feel like this Cinderella had control of her destiny? Did the musical contextualize the magical elements of Rapunzel? Does Into the Woods address the frustrating moral of Little Red Riding Hood? Are the implications of Jack's actions in the land of the giants appropriately addressed? Plus, we reveal which fairy tale we will be discussing as we return to our usual format in December! 

Join our community! View all of the benefits of joining our Patreon including the Official Of Slippers and Spindles Book Club, exclusive polls, monthly bookmarks, Zoom hangouts, and more! https://patreon.com/ofslippersandspindles 

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We love to hear from you! You can reach us at [email protected] 

Music: Through The Woods by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com