Not Exactly for Kids...But Why Not?

As I've mentioned a few times already, my efforts to find children's steampunk literature were thwarted again and again by the limited amount of material that actually exists in that category. However, I found a book in the adult fantasy section of the book store which oddly fits into my definition of children's steampunk. It is called Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables, and it has a selection of shorts story fairy tales that have been revamped to fit into the steampunk world.

Such stories in the collection include "The Clockwork Suit" based on the tale "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Mechanical Wings" based on "The Wild Swans", and "The Steampiper, the Stovepiper, and the Pied Piper of New Hamelin, Texas" based on the legend of the "Pied Piper". The stories incorporate the familiar fables with modern technology, perpetuating the essentially steampunk efforts to go back to simpler times, romanticizing the technology of the past. For example, the story "La Valse" in this collection which is based on Hans Christian Anderson's "Red Shoes" "forges a fable about love, the decadence of technology, and a gala dance that becomes the obsession of the young engineer - and the doom of those who partake in it..." which places heavy emphasis on the inclusion of technology. 

While the adaptations are completely charming and entertaining to the average steampunk fan, I was curious at first how adapting fairy tales could be deemed steampunk, especially as it seems to approach the problem of 'gluing on a few gears' in order to enter the genre. However, the more I read of them, and the more I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that this book fits in with the genre of specifically children's steampunk because it employs the use of something familiar in order to ease the reader into the genre, just like Iwata's Alphabet book seemed to do. By 'steampunking' various fairy tales, the authors of this collection are able to introduce the genre in gentle, but effective ways, displacing the issues enough that the same effect of novels like "The Difference Engine" and "Boneshaker" produce. In this way, the clockwork fairy tales fits into the genre because it takes modern stories and displaces them enough to make the reader reconsider what they had thought was normal and question the progress of technology. 

To this effect, the back cover introduces the collection, saying "Combining the timeless fairy tales that we all read as children with the out-of-time technological wizardry that is steampunk, this collection of stories blends the old and the new in ways sure to engage every fantasy reader..." which shows that not only is steampunk able to fit into the world of children's literature, but it is also able to use familiar children's tales in order to send messages to an adult audience as well.