Rumpelstiltskin Problem - Tapa dura

Have you ever wondered just what was going on when that odd little man with the long name stepped up and volunteered to spin straw into gold for the miller’s daughter? If you stop and think about it, there are some very peculiar and rather hard-to-explain components to the story.
Vivian Vande Velde has wondered too, and she’s come up with these six alternative versions of the old legend. A bevy of miller’s daughters confront their perilous situation in very different ways sometimes comic, sometimes scary. Most of the time, it’s the daughter who gets off safely, but sometimes, amazingly, Rumpelstiltskin himself wins the day. And in one tale, it is the king who cleverly escapes a quite unexpected fate.

Vivian Vande Velde has published several books with Harcourt, including A HIDDEN MAGIC (illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman) and TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM AND SISTERS WEIRD. A full-time writer, she has written numerous books of fantasy for young readers and was hailed as "a master of the unexpected" by the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH. She lives and works in Rochester, New York, with her husband and daughter.