Hero Thieves is inspired by a question I first encountered through a program called Junior Great Books: “Why was it okay for Jack to steal the Giant’s gold?” Why indeed? Why are Jack and the likes of Hernan Cortez and the financial wizards of Wall Street seen as cultural heroes? Who asks for justice for the Giant, the raped peoples of the New World, and the 860,000 families who lost their homes to foreclosure in the first year of our nation’s last financial debacle? They did not live happily ever after.

Cinderella Complicated examines the elements of power in the grasp of the “gentler sex.” Cinderella had her rightful place in Fairyland stripped away through injustice. She suffered but was eventually restored to the aristocracy through magic, love her beauty inspired in a prince, and a foot too small to hang onto its glass slipper. In Anne Boleyn, we see the fairy tale through a grimmer glass, and today’s single mom stands on her own, trying to create the magic without a fairy godmother or a royal husband, but under a ceiling of glass.

Wolf in the Woods begins with the adventure of a girl in a red hooded cape on her way to bring food to her sick granny. She is approached and enticed by a large furry stranger who professes to be her friend, but whom she rightly identifies as a threat. Alas, the guile and persistence of the wolf is more than Red, or the unfortunate altar boy, or the preadolescent nymphet can defend against, and so they are seen here with fear dawning. The advent of the Catholic priest scandals and a thriving “Toddlers & Tiaras” culture proves that the wolf is abroad, and perhaps the Huntsman is unconcerned.