Fairy Tales Can Change Your Life: Unlock your future with creative exercises inspired by storytelling

by Alison Davies

A unique and empowering guide to using the symbolism, themes and archetypes in fairytales to improve your life using practical, creative exercises.

Fight your fears, gain confidence and unlock your future using the power of fairy tales

We first engage with fairy tales in childhood and they never leave us. From the "rescuer" Prince Charming to the scary, shapeshifting wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, the characters, symbolism and narratives in these stories are embedded deep within our psyches.

This book offers a whole host of tips, creative activities and inspiring illustrations to help you draw on the latent power of fairy tales and apply their magic to your everyday life. These include storyboarding your own fairy tale to boost your imagination, devising a quest to build energy and confidence, and identifying your inner hero to improve your problem solving.

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published February 14, 2023

Reviews

[Sophie Crane]

This Wonderful Book has Allowed me to take a look at these fairy tales from the another direction.
(Thanks to Net Galley for this Book.)

[Kaley ❄️ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher/NetGalley for allowing me to review this book!

Now I will say that I wanted to read this book because of the title and cover. I had no idea what it was about or anything. I feel bad for not looking more into the book. I don't like self-help books at all. After I realized what it was, I still persevered to give this book an honest review.

I think the entire concept is intriguing. I would have loved this a lot more if I had enjoyed self help books. There is so much detail in here. I think the concept of using fairytales to help yourself was amazing. The amount of research this book had was great. I really wish this had been a book about dissecting fairytales because the author did an amazing job of that. I think the tips and exercises were okay. They seemed a bit basic to me and overdone just stated in a different way.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys self help books and fantasy books.

[Gillian Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this book but the title have given away that it’s just a self help book, albeit with a twist by comparing yourself to the characters of fairy tales! There’s a lot of creative writing involved to map out the direction you want your own fairy tale to go.
Interesting concept & a few fairy tales I hadn’t heard of!
I’d give it 3.5/5 which is probably a bit unfair as it didn’t do much for me but then I didn’t follow the ideas suggested! There was also a strange chapter that had a bit inserted between paragraphs which hopefully will get sorted in a final edit?
Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced e-copy.
#bookstagram #fairytales #self-help

[Kelly Jarvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairy Tales Can Change Your Life is a book that presents folklore and fairy tales as solutions to life’s problems. Alison Davies explores the characters, symbols, and plots of well-known stories, uncovers deep narrative meanings, and offers practical and creative exercises to help readers enchant their lives.

The book covers the power of storytelling, the hero’s adventure, love and relationships, fears and desires, and transformations. The first chapter provides an overview of fairy tale origins, making connections between the tales we know and ancient myths and legends. Each subsequent chapter focuses on a few well-known stories before providing the reader with questions, activities, and writing prompts that help them apply the story’s lessons to their own lives. Davies believes that there is power in using fairy tales as a springboard for creative writing and storytelling and she encourages all readers to find their voice.

This book was a fun, accessible, and easy read. At times, Davies lacks an understanding of cultural context in relaying the tales and uses sweeping generalizations about “universal” fairy tale themes. For example, she spends time discussing the jealous anger of Queens who worry their beauty is fading without ever exploring the complexities of intimate family relationships in fairy tales like Snow White, but her passion for using fairy tale symbols and images to better her readers’ lives shine through these types of generalizations. She introduces new fairy tale scholars to characters such as the trickster and encourages readers to find the heartbeat of each tale.

The book is a fun introduction to how fairy tales can relate to contemporary human life and presents easy ways to deepen creative thinking. While many of the suggested activities deal with writing or telling stories, others offer ways to improve daily life by transforming thinking and behavior. Fairy Tales Can Change Your Life is a blueprint for taking simple fairy tale inspired actions that will bring enchantment to the every day world.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

[Jo Reads Romance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an uplifting book
5 stars

As soon as I turned the first page, I started to smile with this book. I’m a romance reader so fairytales are almost my religion - so I immediately felt that this book was written for someone like me. But anyone who feels an affinity with the fairytales of your youth will, I’m sure, get a lot out of this book.

The book starts with a quick and interesting history of fairytales and sets the scene for the rest of the book which is split up to fit with the narrative structure of a fairytale. The chapters are:

The Power of Storytelling
Starting Out
Tales of Transformation
Love and Relationships
Fears, Desires and Phobias
Changing Roles and Responsibilities
Creative Ideas
Further Reading

Each chapter is written in such a warm and friendly manner - it’s so easy to read and makes you feel positive about making your life better. While this is essentially a self-help book, it feels more fun that that. Some self-help books make me feel low and then attempt to build me up - this one just felt affirmative and uplifting.

There are also exercises throughout the book, all centered around themes of fairytales, that you can use to find purpose and, according to the blurb, gain confidence, find romance and discover your path to self-fulfilment.

I really enjoyed this book. It felt inspiring, interesting and manageable. Some of the techniques and exercises are those that I have seen before, or been taught in therapy, but the fairytale twist makes things so much more fun and accessible. This is a short book but that makes it so much easier to read and re-read when needed. Definitely 5 stars.

[Kathy Shimpock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book uses fairy tales and folktales as a metaphor for personal growth and development. Included are techniques for storytelling, exercises and visualizations to transform life in the area of love, fears and phobias and to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. These traditional stories provide a template to explore life's difficulties and to shift perspective. Recommended for storytellers working in personal growth settings and to those who would love to create a "happily ever after."

[Hannah Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must say I do love a self help book. I must also say that I loved fairy tales. This book appealed on so many levels. It does give you an interesting way of looking at your life and seeing all the possibilities that lie ahead. A good concept but no life changing, ground breaking stuff here.

[Sarah (blissbubbley) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A self help book that looks at fairy tales for tackling personal obstacles. It is a cute book and I did like. But it depends on what you want from this sort of book. This I would say is for more creative types.

[Joni Owens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover had me immediately. I love a self help book I just couldn’t really get into this one. I think I’ve read too many self help to get much out of this book.

Or maybe I’m too old?

[W Saad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t read more than 38 pages. It was boring and useless until it became definitely the trend. Expected more
Of it .

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to Alison Davies Fairy Tales Can Change Your Life while reading fairy and folk tales for a book group. Davies’ book sounded like something worth mentioning during book group discussion, and in a sense, it is.

Although I had read the publisher’s description, I didn’t expect a self-help book. Probably the title should have told me that, but I’m inclined to see literature as changing one’s life in other ways. Despite not being a self-help book fan, I found Davies’ approach somewhat interesting, such as viewing life experiences through recurrent fairy tale themes and even improving one’s future life by imagining and following one’s own fairy tale. As interesting as the idea may be and as much as we all might like to live our own fairy tale, I haven’t been convinced that fairy tales will solve problems or accomplish goals. Perhaps readers drawn to self-help books will feel differently.

That said, my current book club goal of reading fairy tales did lead me to discover a few previously unfamiliar tales, and I came away with some activities I would enjoy trying out on my granddaughter.

Thanks to NetGalley and Watkins Publishing for the advance reader copy.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of this book was originally written for The Folklore Podcast and can be found on that website.

Fairy tales are universal. Each and every society tells some form of fairy tales, and according to researchers they might be the oldest form of recorded storytelling in existence. To what do they owe that longevity? What is it about fairy tales that endears us so thoroughly? Alison Davies has her theories, many of which are easily accessible within the Fairy Tales Can Change Your Life published by Watkins Publishing and released in February 2023.

Fairy Tales Can Change Your Life, previously published as Be Your Own Fairy Tale in 2015, is based upon the singular notion that fairy tales appeal to us due to the universal messages that they contain. Our own experiences are mirrored within fairy tales. We carry all of the characters within us - from Prince Charming to the Big Bad Wolf. By viewing fairytales through this lens we can enrich our lives, heal our hearts, and face challenges better equipped than before.

Alison Davies is a professional storyteller and author of over 60 books. She has been running workshops on how to improve your life through the use of fairy tales and storytelling for over a decade now, and has condensed some of those workshop lessons into this book. The book is designed to be read in any order. If you wish to jump immediately into how to overcome anxiety you can slip into “Fears, Desires, and Phobias.” If you’d rather focus on your love life, “Love and Relationships” will help guide you towards loving yourself and attracting the right person for you. Each chapter is beautifully bookended by illustrations by Paul Oakley, every one of which evokes the feeling of the fairytale world in stark black and white - from the beginning “Power of Storytelling” to the final chapter “Creative Ideas.”

But, you might protest, I don’t have a creative bone in my body! Davies anticipates this, and counters with easy exercises to ease you into this new creative world. Telling stories can help change your perspectives and through that, solve problems in inventive ways. By the end of the book, should you engage with the exercises, you will be telling stories and entrancing audiences - and more importantly yourself - in no time.

This book is easy to read, but the interactivity of the exercises and top tips, as well as the further reading options, will keep you occupied for a while. Give them all a chance and you might just find that there are more stories within you than you ever anticipated - and beyond that, you enjoy telling them. Fairy tales can indeed change your life, and whether you’re creating your own or revisiting a best loved tale from your childhood you’ll be engaging with them in a more thoughtful manner after finishing Davies’ book.