If you're a fan of Robin McKinley's enchanted worlds wherein women find freedom from societal conventions by mythical and majestic means (i.e. The Blue Sword), then you'll enjoy Block's collection of short stories. These are not stories for children, but rather for teens & adults who are looking for thorny, emotionally complicated retellings of classics in a time when Nature was wild and more dangerous. p. 190-191: "Beauty began to change. Her hair was always a tangle, she bathed less often, her skin smelled of the garden and the forest, she was almost always barefoot--there were hard calluses on her soles. Her senses were so sharp that she could smell and hear things she had never known existed before. This was the happiest she had ever been in her life, if happiness is waking with a start of joy for the day, feeling each moment in every cell of your being, and going to sleep at night with a mind like a clear moonlit sky."
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