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Welcome to Once Upon a Retelling! I'm a huge fan of retellings, and I'm really interested in hearing about authors' own love of the original stories, and what inspired them to retell those stories. And so Once Upon a Retelling was born, a feature in which I interview authors about their versions of well-loved tales.
Today, I'm stoked to have Kim Zarins stopping by to discuss Sometimes We Tell the Truth, her retelling of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
Can you tell us a little about Sometimes We Tell the Truth? What kind of a retelling of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is it?
Sometimes We Tell the Truth is a contemporary YA Chaucer retelling, in which American high school seniors take an all-day bus ride from Canterbury, Connecticut, to Washington DC. To make them pass the time well-behaved, their civics teacher tasks them with telling stories, and the winner will get an A in the class. This means, as in Chaucer’s original, I have about two dozen characters tell a story on the road. In Chaucer’s unfinished text, the pilgrims never arrive at Canterbury, and we never learn who won the competition of telling the best tale. So I had the fun of inventing my own ending and all the in-between bits that helped me get to that ending.
Today, I'm stoked to have Kim Zarins stopping by to discuss Sometimes We Tell the Truth, her retelling of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
Can you tell us a little about Sometimes We Tell the Truth? What kind of a retelling of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is it?Sometimes We Tell the Truth is a contemporary YA Chaucer retelling, in which American high school seniors take an all-day bus ride from Canterbury, Connecticut, to Washington DC. To make them pass the time well-behaved, their civics teacher tasks them with telling stories, and the winner will get an A in the class. This means, as in Chaucer’s original, I have about two dozen characters tell a story on the road. In Chaucer’s unfinished text, the pilgrims never arrive at Canterbury, and we never learn who won the competition of telling the best tale. So I had the fun of inventing my own ending and all the in-between bits that helped me get to that ending.
