Fantasy, fairy tales, happy endings
Women in fairy tales and fantasy literature can be portrayed as weak, warned away from danger rather than encouraged to explore its possibilities. The restrictions present limits on young girls at impressionable ages. Wanting to rewrite that story line, Washington state middle school teachers Constance Logan and Elise Mueller came up with “The Super Secret Histories of Your Seven Sisters,” a series featuring strong female characters from mythology and modern fantasy literature. But their own story would not have happened if they had not been selected to attend the National Endowment for the Humanities seminar course on fairy tales and fantasy literature, “Golden Compasses as Moral Compasses: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Fairy Tales and Fantasy,” at Harvard University. “Meeting each other was serendipity,” said Logan, who teaches in Snoqualmie, Wash. “We live in the same state, two hours apart, but the odds of meeting each other are not good. It is like...