Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes

One, two, three, four…

Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes can be purchased at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and our favorite, The Book Depository as well as at other online sellers. Please support independent sellers if you can. Also available in digital editions from the publisher’s website, and from Amazon. All proceeds will be used to support Cabinet des Fées and charities* of its choice.

Cabinet des Fées is very excited to announce the release of Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes, our new twenty-seven page chapbook including seven full page, full color illustrations by Adam Oehlers, who also graciously gave an interview with curator and contributor, Francesca Forrest. She gets right to the point.

“You’ve done a fabulous job capturing the spirit of our macabre jump rope rhymes. Can you say a little bit about your mindset as you were creating each painting? Did you see each rhyme as part of the continuing adventure of one protagonist, or did you have lots of alternative Cinderellas in mind?” Click here to discover Adam’s answer and to see more examples of his wonderful work, or read on for more information about the book itself.

We quote here from Francesca’s introduction to the rhymes:

Cinderella, dressed in yella
Went downstairs to kiss her fella
By mistake she kissed a snake
How many doctors did it take?
One, two, three, four…

This jump rope rhyme was in actual use in the United States at least as late as the 1970s and 1980s I can remember jumping rope to it, or this variant:

Cinderella, dressed in yella
Went downstairs to kiss her fella
By mistake her girdle busted
How many people were disgusted?
One, Two, Three, Four…

Fast forward to nowadays, and put that rhyme in the hands of speculative poets and short-story writers and their friends. These are people with a lurid sense of humor, a color palette not limited to yellow, and a deep interest in imagining for Cindy some life-changing experiences beyond snake kissing and girdle busting.

Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes shows you what a childhood pastime looks like when you dial macabre up to eleven. If playground fun got married to the genetically engineered child of Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman, their offspring would be Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes. With contributions from Francesca Forrest, Sonya Taaffe, Samantha Henderson, Erik Amundsen, Rose Lemberg, Nadia Bulkin, Julia Rios, and Kyle Davis, these are not the rhymes you jumped rope to as a child.

Cinderella wearing lime
got involved with corporate crime
her finances aren’t all they seem,
since she runs a Ponzi scheme
don’t expect her to amend
until she’s facing five to ten.

*In tribute to all of the animal friends and helpers without whom our fairy tale heroines and heros would themselves be lost, CdF has decided to fund animal charities with this publication. Fifty percent of all profits will be donated each quarter, beginning with the quarter ending June 30, 2012. The remaining profits will go toward the maintenance of this website, and to fund Scheherezade’s Bequest planned print volume.

Our first batch of proceeds will be donated to HULA Animal Rescue: Home for Unwanted and Lost Animals. HULA is an independent UK charity with a non-destruction policy for every healthy animal, in service since 1972. From their website:

HULA was started by a concerned vet, his wife and other animal lovers, because a lady brought her young puppy into their veterinary surgery and asked for it to be put down “as I’m going on holiday and can’t afford to put the dog in kennels”. At that time, there were no animal rescue centres in Bedfordshire. The vet refused and Blackie became the first rescued animal.

Our second batch of proceeds will be donated to the Oldies Club, our third to Dolly’s Foundation, and our fourth to The Donkey Sanctuary based in Devon, England. We’ll post more information about those three charities when their times comes.

We thank you for your support of Cabinet des Fées.