My childeren's book-Jane Eyre rewitten

[Lady Blue03]

<font color=pink>Well here it is everyone! Now of course, you're all free to critique it, but remember, constructive critisism! Just keep in mind there usually two paragraphs a page with spaces between on my copy for the pictures, if you think it might look funny [img]tongue.gif[/img]

<font color=silver>In a land far away from ours, a long time ago, a faerie named Jane lived with her evil aunt and cousins. They were big mean dragons called the Reeds, and they all hated poor Jane.
One day, Jane got sick of the treatment the dragons were giving her, so she yelled out all of her anger at Aunt Reed. The dragon was stunned, and Jane thought she had left a lasting impression.
But Jane found out the next day that she was being sent away to a school that taught her how to behave and be a lady. Even though Jane was happy that she was leaving the dragons, she didn’t think she deserved to go to the school just for telling her aunt how she felt.
Jane soon found that life at the school was harsh. She hardly got anything to eat and only had one dress. The lessons were hard, and some of the teachers were strict. Jane wished she could be anywhere but at the school.
But then she met Helen, the winged horse. Helen was quiet, and never spoke back to teachers, even if she was right and they were wrong. Helen was older than Jane, and helped her adjust to her new life. The two quickly became friends.
Just as Jane was getting used to life at school, Helen got sick. Her coat was no longer a shiny white, and her wings drooped in a sad sort of way. The teachers said Helen had to leave, and Jane never saw Helen again.
Jane missed Helen terribly, but she continued to learn at grow at the school. Her teachers were very proud of her, and when she was old enough, she became a teacher too.
After a year of teaching, Jane became bored and left the school to find something new and interesting to fill her life. She looked around and found a good job: teaching and a faerie girl, who was the same age Jane had been before her mean Aunt Reed had sent her away. The faerie girl, Adele, lived at a place called Thornfield. Jane quickly moved in and got acquainted with the people who worked there.
Adele was a good faerie, who learned very quickly, leaving Jane some time to explore Thornfield. By speaking with the headmistress of the house, Jane learned that the man who owned Thornfield was named Rochester, and he would be coming home next week. Jane wondered what he was like.
When Jane finally did meet Rochester, he was not what she was expected. He was a big powerful centaur, like Jane had been told, but she had thought of him as a young handsome man. The Rochester she saw wasn’t that handsome at all: his coat was all shaggy and dull like he never paid attention to it, and his face wasn’t very good to look at either.
But when Jane finally got to talk to him, she found out that he was really quite smart. Smarter than her, in fact. She found him quite pleasant to be around, and before she knew it, she was in love.
After Rochester had been home for many a week, he invited some of his friends over, much to Jane’s displeasure. One of these friends happened to be a beautiful centaur woman named Blanche. This woman obviously liked Rochester, and it seemed that he liked her back! Jane was instantly jealous.
Jane had to endure Blanche and Rochester’s affection towards each other for many days. She was beginning to feel left out, and wished they would just go away. She was worried that Rochester would marry Blanche, and Jane would be forced to put up with her forever!
When Rochester’s friends finally did leave, Jane spent her time in the garden. While sitting next to a chestnut tree, who should find her, but Rochester himself! And do you know what Rochester did?
Asked Jane to marry him!
Jane couldn’t believe it! When she asked about Blanche, he said he knew Blanche didn’t really love him like Jane did, and that he was so much happier around Jane than the snobby Blanche. Jane was so happy she fluttered up and gave him a little kiss.
Jane knew that she and Rochester would live happily ever after…but one day she woke up to find the dress she was to wear at her wedding all torn to pieces! Thinking some ghost did it, she got a different dress, and soon the day of the wedding was at hand
Jane was convinced nothing could ruin her wonderful day…until the preacher said they couldn’t marry. When she demanded why, he told her that Rochester already had a wife. Jane didn’t believe him! But Rochester said it was true, and even took her back to Thornfield to show Jane his wife, Bertha.
But Jane was so upset she just couldn’t bear to be with Rochester, who had told her the most horrible lie and broke her heart. She ran away from Thornfield and Rochester without looking back.
Jane wandered around for a long time, and was terribly lonely, but she refused to go back to the man who had betrayed her heart.
After much wandering, Jane came across a group of unicorns, who brought her to their home and took good care of her.
Jane began to teach again, and she was as happy as she had ever been at Thornfield. She never thought of Rochester during that happy time.
But while watching a most enchanting sunset one day, she heard her voice upon the wind, and in her heart she knew it Rochester, and that he was in pain, and needed her.
So Jane went back to Thornfield. But when she arrived, it was gone! Simply disappeared! She asked a local person what had happened, and he said that Bertha was a witch, and cast a spell on Thornfield that made it and her disappear. Rochester was still around though, so Jane set off to find him.
She searched everywhere, and finally, when she though she would never find him, she came upon a little house all tucked away in the woods. Thinking that the people inside might have seen Rochester, she knocked on their door. And guess who answered!
It was Rochester!
He brought her inside, and Jane found out that Rochester still loved her, and she still loved him. He explained that Bertha had cast a curse on him so that he would never have a happy marriage. When Jane asked if she and him were still going to be married, he said he hoped so.
So they did!
And they lived happily ever after…</font></font>

[Night Stalker]

Not bad LB .... try embellishing some more. The plot has the key points but seems a little jumpy. Go into some of the experiences at home and school.

[Aelia Jusa]

A couple of points. Note I'm coming from never having read Jane Eyre so it's really the same perspective as your audience .

Obviously you've encountered the problem of trying to condense what I imagine is a substantial novel into a few hundred words - not easy at all, and I think you've made a good first go at it. It does need some changes though. At the moment it's all a bit disconnected - 'this happened then this happened then this happened' with not a lot of connectivity between the events. I'm not sure how faithful you have to be to the original work - whether you have to cover all the important parts, obviously you've cut out a lot of events, but if you are going to retain all the growing up and becoming a teacher parts, you need to make them relevant to the overall plot. The Helen event for instance has a lot of potential for giving Jane some sort of learning experience that she might be able to call on when Rochester does her wrong, but as it is it's just a random event in her early life that doesn't seem to have anything to do with her later experiences. Perhaps she could muse after Rochester leaves that she managed to get through that and she'll be happy again or something?

Which is relevant to my next point - I know in the last thread you made discussing this project that having a moral to the story is very important, for any book but especially a children's book. I'm having trouble picking out a clear moral or purpose to the story. I think it might be something like don't give up on people or something (with Rochester and Helen - though Helen never came back, not sure about that), but whatever it is, it's not clear at all. Remember that while you have the perspective of knowing the story and what it was about, so your condensement makes sense to you, a person who doesn't know it has only this to rely on - it must be self-contained. I think that if you are going to retain the early life bits then they have to be relevant to the moral as well - it all has to tie together somehow.

Also, I think making the characters fantasy creatures is cute, and could be quite effective, and is so far as you've chosen good exemplars for the personalities of the characters, at the moment it sort of seems like making them fantastic just for the sake of it, you know? Why are they dragons and fairies and so on? I don't mean why are the Reeds dragons - obviously because they're awful, but why are they not just people? It may be as simple as fleshing out the setting a little bit more - you have the land far far away bit, perhaps just a little more background on where this is all occuring and why they're not humans.

Finally, and importantly, every good story needs a villain! Now you have two good ones, Aunt Reed and Rochester's wife, but both are really under-utilised. Not knowing the story I assumed Aunt Reed would be a pivotal character, but she fizzles out early, and Rochester's wife is never even seen. I think you should really make her a more important character, perhaps so that her putting the spell on Rochester is told to the audience such that Jane doesn't know - always a popular technique to have the audience 'in on' something that the main character doesn't know about, so you can have the audience engaged in the story, sympathetic towards both Jane and Rochester and hoping that she'll find out somehow. As it is Rochester seems like a real cad and for me at least, the 'oh I had a spell on me' didn't really make me like him more at the end. Rochester coming back to her was totally out of the blue as well - if we know that it was really a spell from the start then we'll be hoping that at some point he'll be saved and come back, instead of just assuming he's no longer a part of the story anymore.

Anyway I hope that's all useful, and doesn't seem like I'm criticising you too much. I think it's a great base to work from, but some tweaking will make it much better [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Lady Blue03]

Those are excellent points, Aelia. The one probelm I have is keeping the thing below twenty pages. Elaborating more on everything, and leaving room for the illustrations would stretch it beyond, and I'm at 17 pages now. I didn't get enough input in time though. Paper is due tomorrow, and I've already printed it out with some minor fixes in diction, and the illustrations are being drawn as we speak. I couldnt center on a decidable moral either. Jane Eyre doesn't really have a moral, meh [img]tongue.gif[/img]

However, if i ever someday decide to write a real book. I will definatley keep those points in mind