Simply Enchanting

On a high school trip a long long long time ago I ran out of books to read, anybody who has been anywhere near me without some sort of reading material knows that this is just a disaster in the making.  So a huge search was sent out for a literary distraction resulting in a book that would become one of my all time favorites, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. 

This book was my first full blown introduction to world of retold fairytales and it was wonderful! 

The story keeps all of the elements of the beloved Cinderella story, the dead beloved mother, fairy godmother, glass slippers, wicked stepmother, evil stepsisters, a midnight spell and of course the glass slippers.  While keeping all of the elements Ms. Levine completely recreates the world, situations, and characters in the book.  Ella (the main character) and Prince Char actually meet, know each other and fall in love through out the whole book, giving some actual plausibility to there happy ending which is always a sticking point in the old fairy tales (True lasting love at first sight...really?!?)  Ella's fairy godmother is also with her the whole time, making the reasoning behind the magical help also more realistic (at least as realistic as a magic fairy godmother gets).  This re-telling also involves ogres, giants, elves and an exceptionally bossy parrot.  The element that really ties it all together for me is the curse our heroine has been put under.  When she was born another fairy

heard her crying and gave her the "gift" of obedience and immediately ordered her to stop crying.  This "gift" had the effect of forcing Ella to obey any order or command given to her.  This leads to some very hilarious and tragic consequences and again goes a long way in making our feisty protagonist plausible (I'm using that word a lot, sorry to lazy to pull out my thesaurus)  I really like it when an author at least makes an attempt to explain some of the more bizarre aspects that are usually needed to get a story moving.  In the end Ella has her happily ever after, which is how it should be.  I really loved this book and have read it many many many times, in fact I've gone through about three copies of it :-)  If you like traditional fairytales, humor, retellings, or just a nice light read then go get this book!  There is a movie which I was very excited about 'cause I think this is a very filmable book and the cast was amazing (Hello Cary Elwes!) but I have to say I hated the movie, in fact if they hadn't called it Ella Enchanted I wouldn't have even known that is what it was supposed to be BLECH!  Anyways I give this book 10 out of 10 pieces of Godiva chocolate.

Do you think this book did a good job retelling Cinderella?  Was the movie as awful as I think it was?  Does my mixing of tenses mean I should go back to grade school English?