Inclusive YA Retellings for the Classroom Library

I recently finished Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron and it got me thinking about using inclusive YA retellings in Secondary ELA. Retellings (or “reimaginings,” as I like to think of them) involve taking any story and giving it a new spin. This provides the reader a novel (hah!) way to connect with the material. We know that retellings stretch as far back as Shakespeare (he based Romeo and Juliet on a poem by Arthur Brooke). So let’s dig in… why are retellings so important to our collective conscience?     Cinderella is Dead is set in a Dystopian fantasy future in which the Cinderella story as we know it has been weaponized against women to bring them into submission. Our LGBTQ+ heroine will not be attending the ball, business as usual. It’s 200 years