Modern Cinderella Story

The story “Cindy Ellie, A Modern Fairy Tale” by Mary Carter Smith from the anthology Talk That Talk is a modern Cinderella story. I enjoyed reading this story because it is modern, original and entertaining.

One of the things I really liked from this story was the modern twist. One of my favorite scenes in this story is when the Cindy Ellie’s godma turned the onion into a white Cadillac. I liked this scene because it shows the story’s modern twist. Who doesn’t want a white Cadillac these days? I also liked how the godma turned Cindy Ellie’s rags into a dress made from African laces and made her hair into braids. The reason I liked this is because I feel it embraces Cindy Ellie’s culture as she receives a traditional African outfit. It also makes this fairy tale original from the other fairy tales where the princesses get sparkly and puffy dresses. Another characteristic I liked about this story is the humor and exaggeration used by the author to describe the characters. One example of this is when the author writes “Poor Cindy Ellie had to give one a perm, the other a jheri curl, and both of them facials; not that it helped much. Honey’s them gals was ugly from the inside out!” I think the humor in the writing style makes the story entertaining and fun to read.

While reading the story I encountered two words that needed to be clarified. One of the words was curdled. This word can be found on page 397 in the sentence, “The milk of human kindness had curdled in her breast." I found out that the word curdled means to spoil or to turn sour. Learning this word allowed me to realize that the author was saying that Cindy Ellie’s step mom was actually cruel. The next word I needed to clarify was the word primping. This word can also be found on page 397 in the sentence, “Oh, them stepsisters was primping and buying designer gowns to go to the ball.” The word primping means to dress with excessive attention to detail. This means the stepsisters were really trying to look their very best to impress the mayor's son.

The story “Cindy Ellie. A Modern Fairy Tale” by Mary Carter Smith has turned into one of my favorite fairy tales. I really enjoyed it because of the author’s style of writing and because of the story’s modern twist. If I could choose anyone to ask a question to, I would choose the author. I would ask her what inspired her to write this story?Another question I would ask her is, what other fairy tale does she have a modern twist for?