Review: Poisoned Apples: Poems For You My Pretty

I received this book for free from FTC: Exchange for honest opinion, Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Every little girl goes through her princess phase, whether she wants to be Snow White or Cinderella, Belle or Ariel. But then we grow up. And life is not a fairy tale.

Christine Heppermann's collection of fifty poems puts the ideals of fairy tales right beside the life of the modern teenage girl. With piercing truths reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins, this is a powerful and provocative book for every young woman. E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars, calls it "a bloody poetic attack on the beauty myth that's caustic, funny, and heartbreaking."

Cruelties come not just from wicked stepmothers, but also from ourselves. There are expectations, pressures, judgment, and criticism. Self-doubt and self-confidence. But there are also friends, and sisters, and a whole hell of a lot of power there for the taking. In fifty poems, Christine Heppermann confronts society head on. Using fairy tale characters and tropes, Poisoned Apples explores how girls are taught to think about themselves, their bodies, and their friends. The poems range from contemporary retellings to first-person accounts set within the original tales, and from deadly funny to deadly serious. Complemented throughout with black-and-white photographs from up-and-coming artists, this is a stunning and sophisticated book to be treasured, shared, and paged through again and again.

These are a bunch of poems detailed and written beautifully. They are not your typical lovey dove ones but they take fairy tales and tell them how they are. The drastic measures girls take to be skinny, to be beautiful. It also deals with bullying.

Truth: Every poems is short yet very powerful. Here I was thinking I was going to get cool retales of fairy tales but instead I got the truth about beauty. The way it eats someone from the inside out. The truth of words and how much they hurt. Each poem is told from so many different point of views that you can’t help but be consumed by them all.

In short, this is great collection of poems that hits you right in the heart. Every girl wants to be a princess but getting there is not easy. Especially with the pressures of this world, girls are dying. The pressure to be skinny, pretty, popular, etc. Poisoned Apples is impressive.

I give it 4 BITES!

Happy Reading!