July 31 - "The Canary Prince"

“The Canary Prince”
by Italo Calvino
Italian Folktales (1980)

* * * * (Great) Folktale

A witch grants a prince the ability to turn into a canary so that he can reach the princess he loves.

I enjoyed this story more than some of the other folktales because of its uniqueness – an ability to forego some of the more formulaic elements of these Italian folktales – and its more logical narrative. While this story still had its moments of illogical incidents and suddenly appearing characters, the entire tale wasn’t populated by such occurrences. I also enjoyed the fact that it was a riff on the Rapunzel story – or maybe the Rapunzel story was the one doing the riffing. It’s always fascinating to see a different take on a familiar story.

[This story was read on July 31. The review was not posted until later due to laziness on my part.]