Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Fairy-tale Beginning

by M.L. Hickerson from the October 26, 2009 issue.

Tagline: The last person Jim expected to meet in the park was a real-life Show White!

In a nutshell: Jim is dressed as a prince for the Halloween party in the children's ward at the hospital where he works as a doctor. His car breaks down near the hospital and he's forced to walk the rest of the way across the park. On the way, he surprises a woman dressed as Snow White. When she hits her head after falling, he convinces her to come to the hospital with him. Her daycare class (the seven dwarves) join the hospital party and Jim and "Snow" make a date to see each other again.

Observations: Making the Snow White story come to life is an adorable idea for a story, but challenging. Jim has to dress as a prince because there were no other costumes left. Check. I buy that. I can believe that he has to trek into the woods of the park to get to the hospital. I can even believe he happens upon Snow White in the park, with her dwarf-like charges. However, my imagination was stretched a tad too far when I saw her name was Miss White. I'll admit to rolling my eyes a little there. Otherwise, I thought this story was very cute.

Woman's World Stand-bys: Car trouble

My Favorite Part: I laughed when I read, "...so he locked his car and took off into the woods." Oh, brother, that cracked me up. It was that classic, "What NOW?" moment for poor dressed-in-a-puffy-shirt Jim.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad to see these new entries, Kate. I had my first story published in an August issue - was secretly hoping you would review it! I am learning a lot from this blog. Please keep the great insights coming!

Kate Willoughby said...

Oh, I took a break for a while. I'm sorry! Which story was it? I'm sure I read it.