At birth, Ella is inadvertently cursed by an imprudent fairy named Lucinda, who bestows on her the "gift" of obedience. Anything anyone tells her to do, Ella must obey. Another girl might have been cowed by this affliction, but not feisty Ella: "Instead of making me docile, Lucinda's curse made a rebel of me. Or perhaps I was that way naturally." When her beloved mother dies, leaving her in the care of a mostly absent and avaricious father, and later, a loathsome stepmother and two treacherous stepsisters, Ella's life and well-being seem in grave peril. But her intelligence and saucy nature keep her in good stead as she sets out on a quest for freedom and self-discovery, trying to track down Lucinda to undo the curse, fending off ogres, befriending elves, and falling in love with a prince along the way. Yes, there is a pumpkin coach, a glass slipper, and a happily ever after, but this is the most remarkable, delightful, and profound version of Cinderella you've ever read.
Taken from http://www.amazon.com/
About the Author
Gail Carson Levine
I grew up in upper Manhattan, Washington Heights to be exact, a hilly, pretty neighborhood. My family lived across the street from P.S. 173, my elementary school, and from a park where I used to climb what my friends and I called the "danger" rocks, which were part of the palisades that overlook the Hudson River. Going up, clinging to cracks with my fingertips, terrified, I'd think, If I live, I will never do this again. When I reached the top I'd work my way down and start over just as frightened as before.From third grade through high school I wrote stories and poems, and a few of my poems were published in an anthology of student writing, but I never thought of becoming a writer. The authors of most of my favorite childhood books were dead (Mark Twain, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Anna Sewell). I knew a few artists because my dad owned a commercial art studio, and I saw actors in the movies and on stage, but I didn't think of writing as work that any modern person did.
In college——first Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, then City College of New York (Phi Beta Kappa, not that I'm bragging)——I majored in Philosophy, a useless major for a future writer. Philosophers use winding, twisty, endless sentences and words like posit, predicate, epistemology, ontology. Don't get me wrong. Writers need to have enormous vocabularies, and I never met a word I didn't love, but we use our arsenal judiciously. We don't go all sesquipedelian at the drop of a hat. And in college I met and married my husband David, who is a very witty man. He's been giving me humor lessons ever since!
After college, I worked for New York State government, mostly in jobs that had to do with welfare. My favorite time was the first part of my career when I helped people find work. How satisfying that was!
Meanwhile, I did my first bit of writing for children. In the 1970's I wrote the script for a musical called Spacenapped. David wrote the music and lyrics, and it was performed by The Heights Players, a community theater in Brooklyn. But I still didn't think of myself as a writer. I read novels constantly, as I always had, and one day while I was meditating I asked myself why, since I adored stories, I never made up any. That was the beginning of The King's Cure, an art appreciation book for kids. I wrote it and drew pencil illustrations of birds and used reproductions of famous art for the illustrations——and no one would publish it——but I became hooked on writing. I took writing classes and joined critique groups and The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (find it online at www.scbwi.org, a great organization). And I collected rejection letters for nine years until an editor wanted the manuscript for Ella Enchanted. You know the rest.
Taken from http://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/
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