Ella Cinders Goes to the Ball: Ella's Big Chance by Shirley Hughes

A friend of mine once remarked that there were really only about five stories in the world, all told in infinite variations, and if she's right, the Cinderella story has to one of them.

Shirley Hughes, one of Britain's most celebrated author-illustrators, has an elegant turn on this classic motif, in her award-winning Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz-Age Cinderella (Kate Greenaway Medal (Awards)). Set in a British city during the Roaring Twenties, it tells the tale of Ella Cinders. the motherless daughter of Mr. Cinders, owner of a chic dress shop which prospers from his stylish designs and Ella's peerless dressmaking skills. The third member of their staff is their doorman and delivery boy Buttons, who is the plump and pretty red-haired Ella's chief admirer.

But when Mr. Cinders takes a new wife, a slim and chic widow with two languid, willowy daughters, Ella definitely takes a demotion. Forced to sleep in the basement cutting room with only an old gray cat for company and made to work long hours over her sewing machine, Ella is relegated to virtual sweat shop labor by her callous stepsisters, who call her "Pudge" and "Carrots," and laze about, slouching elegantly, as they model Ella's creations.

When their most important client, the Duchess of Arc, invites the family to attend a party for her eligible bachelor son, the Duke of Arc, the stepmother and her daughters, Ruby and Pearl, insist on original couture from Ella's needle, but Ella herself is not allowed to accompany them.

Just as Buttons is about to console the tearful Ella with a fry-up of bacon and eggs, a strange woman carrying a fancy umbrella appears at the door of the shop.

"I am your fairy godmother," she told Ella, briskly peeling off her gloves. "It's my job to see that you go to the ball, so let's not waste time."

Transforming Buttons' delivery bike into a sleek limousine and the old gray cat into the chauffeur, with a wave of her umbrella the Fairy Godmother transfigures Ella's old black dress into a light and slimming silver beaded gown which shows off Ella's curves entrancingly. At the ball, of course, the Duke has eyes for no one but her.

Ella finds that she is not in the least overawed by him. They chat and laugh as they glide and spin, two-step, quick-step, fox-trot, and tango in perfect time together.

As expected, midnight comes all too soon, and hastily leaving one slipper behind, Ella jumps into her limousine just before it is re-transformed back into Buttons' old bike. In her dowdy black dress, Ella pushes the bike back to the shop alone, since "the cat, refusing a lift in the basket, stalked off crossly into the night, to make his own way home."

The classic happy ending seems inevitable when the Duke, clutching Ella's lost slipper, finally turns up to try it on the ladies of the Cinders' household. Although he takes the shabbily dressed Ella for a servant, she somehow seems familiar, and when her foot slips easily into the shoe, the handsome Duke of Arc urges her to come away with him immediately to announce their engagement.

"No," said Ella slowly. "Thank you very much, Duke, but no, I'm sorry--I can't. You see, I love someone else."

Yes, it's the faithful Buttons who has won Ella's hand and heart, and soon they depart, laughing and wobbling a bit on his old bicycle, gray cat in the basket, to start up their own posh little dress shop, watched unobserved, as we see, by a smiling woman with a fancy umbrella.

"When we are married," says Buttons, "you may not live like a duchess, but you will eat like a queen. You never did try my bacon and eggs, did you?"

Tenderly told, this well-worn tale is dazzlingly illustrated in Hughes' wonderful signature style. Drawing upon the work of Jazz Age French couturiers Paton, Doucet, and Poiret, Hughes' flapper-style designs are softly dazzling, and her dance scenes, she says, are chicly inspired by the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz-Age Cinderella (Kate Greenaway Medal (Awards)) is a fresh tale of a Cinderella who chooses her own happy ending.