Moss Gown - William H. Hooks

When deciding upon the two additional Cinderella tales that I had to read for CRIN R21, I wanted to choose one that I was more familiar with (Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters - my next blog post!) and one that I was less familiar with. I sat in Swem in the Juvenile Section with Cinderella books spread out around me and settled on Moss Gown, written by William H. Hooks and illustrated by Donald Carrick. I chose it not only because I was less familiar with it, but also because it takes place in Eastern North Carolina, a part of the state that I'm extremely familiar with, as I live five minutes from the Southeastern Virginia/Northeastern North Carolina border. 

In reading the "Author's Note" located at the back of the book, William Hooks acknowledges that he wrote Moss Gown as a combination of many Cinderella-like tales that he heard growing up as a child. He also admits that there are traces of King Lear in it, but that this was not his doing - the Elizabethan history of North Carolina and the rurality of the area blended into one, single, story that he chose to document. 

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is its inclusion of spell-casting, a sort of "witch doctor woman," and the use of the term "gris-gris," which was historically used in the Carolinas to identify this particular kind of spell-casting. The phrase "gris-gris" (pronounced "gree-gree") is Candace/Moss Gown's form of Dorothy's red slippers. Whenever she says "gris-gris, gris-gris, grine!" the moss gown that makes her so beautiful appears before her in the hands of the gris-gris woman and she is given instructions to realize that the gown will turn back to rags when the Morning Star no longer shines. The gris-gris woman almost seems to be an homage to an old Creole Vodou woman, particularly in the picture on page 26 of the book (seen to the left). From the time that I've spent in Haiti and the conversations that I had with a Haitian Vodou priest, much of this picture represents very stereotypical views of vodou, the intensity of the eyes, the phantasmagoric imagery present, and the magic that seems to drip off of the page with every glance.  


Moss Gown and the illustrations present in it deal interestingly with race,  as the gris-gris woman is referred to as simply "black." Other than the gris-gris woman, there are no other major depictions of African-American characters in the book, apart from the servant people pictured in the start of Section III of the book. I found this interesting, albeit historically accurate, as we as readers are given the perception that Moss Gown takes place in the 1800's in rural North Carolina. The only identification of time that we are given is the first sentence, "Long ago in the old South there was a man who owned a great plantation." This presents an interesting dilemma for teachers in including this book in their libraries. I would have this book present in my library, and even read it aloud to my students, explaining the historical time period in which it takes place and talking about plantation systems if I wanted to tie it into other units. 


I don't know if Moss Gown is my favorite Cinderella adaptation that I've read, but I definitely think that it provided a new and different face to an old and traditional story.