Cinderella: The Real Story

By Jan Burchett, Sara Vogler and Omar Aranda

  • is a British writer

  • is a British writer

  • is an artist from Argentina

  • First published in 2011

  • 7-12

This book is very useful for Creative Writing classes. I am working with a mixed classroom of 7 to 9 year-old children and every page from the book is a perfect writing prompt. I will share a few and tell you what we were doing with the kids.

First, we talked about e-mails as children never use them. I asked the class to think of a fairy tale character and think of a funny e-mail address for them.

The kids laughed when they read the first e-mail in this book and the idea of Cinderella being a baddie really challenged them. The second assignment was to write an e-mail from Cinder’s school teacher and mention all her stunts. Some of the kids sent an actual e-mail to our school and even got a reply. This task works well in a mixed classroom as everyone can write to their ability.

One of the pages is a screenshot off some chatroom or website where fairy tale locals gossip about Cinderella and complain about her behaviour. So what we did was: we all picked a character and each kid had to have a moan. This is useful because they get to express themselves in a different way and they have to fulfil their role as they write. If you have a school chat, they can do their assignment lived there and turn it into a real conversation.

Then our characters needed to write a shopping list. Cinderella needs a dress, what does Humpty Dumpty need for the ball? Again, this gave the kids a way to to come up with creative things and it helped me to build a lesson on their answers as they were not identical and we could discuss them.

Megan and Bethany are very nice girls and offer Cinderella their stuff to wear to the ball. We know what their sister is like. What do you think she would say and write to Megan? Chances are it’s not good. the kids loved this task as they could be really bad and nasty and say things they don’t usually get to say. There was also a bit of Drama in this task as some children find it really hard to act as a bad person. The task sounded easier than it was as it pushed the children out of their comfort zone. A few of them started nasty and finished they message with something like 'love you/thank you/that’s so sweet of you’.

The real Cinderella was not nice at all. LOL.

The next page gives us an opportunity to be a fairy for a day. We need to advertise our company. How much does magic cost? What services would you offer if you were a fairy? Do you offer any refunds or package deals? There’s so much to talk and write about.

Stay in character because coming up is the ball and the kids will be required to talk about what happened. Just imagine you are a group of friends gossiping about other people and the daft things they got up to at the event such as Cinderellas’s stunts, Beauty who looks ridiculous with her new boyfriend who really needs a shave, the Three Little Pigs who polished off the buffet in five minutes flat and don’t even get me started on how much mischief Grumpy from the Seven Dwarfs got into.

You could write newspaper articles, police reports, letters and secret messages between friends.