Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 141

Fairy Tale Tabs 10/18/2012

Don't miss Tales of Faerie's Cinderella Pumpkins. Je les adore!

This one I seriously debated as a separate blog post, but I was firm with myself. Read about this Facebook initiative: Fairy Tales Meet Facebook in Indonesia. "'Maerchen Goes Facebook' is a new Facebook fan page under the name of DE-Fans, created by Goethe-Institut Indonesia for the region of Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It has more than 5,700 fans and counting." Fascinating competitions, tourism promotions, and fairy tale hype...

If you don't know about Humble Bundle yet, check it out. Part of the current bundle ending in a few days are books by Kelly Link with fairy tale inspirations, Stranger Things Happen (such as Travels with the Snow Queen and Shoe and Marriage) and Magic for Beginners (such as Catskin). Those last two links are to Amazon so you can read the book reviews and tables of content to learn more about the fairy tale influences.

Huffington Post featured Fairy Tales For 20-Somethings Tumblr Reveals The Truth About Growing Up.

And for Halloween, read about Boulder High presents twisted fairytale haunted house. Not many details about the fairy tales, but fun to consider.

Fairy tale figurines from vegetables by Huyen Tran Chau

From Germany: Fairy tale figurines from vegetables:

Vietnamese master cutter Huyen Tran Chau has crafted a series of fairy tale figurines made from vegetables. A selection will be exhibited in the city library in the German town of Lübeck. The artist herself was present at the official opening.

Huyen Tran Chau was inspired by the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales. She used a simple kitchen knife to cut out the figurines, and utilized certain spices to add color.

Cutting vegetables has become a venerable art form in Asia. The aim is to please the eye as well as the tongue.

The exhibit will run till November the second.

I couldn't find more images from this exhibit other than the one above but here are some old images by the same artist that I found on a different blog here and here. I love these. They are quite fun.

Grimm Brothers, Very Grim Tales by Neely Tucker

Oh, what are we going to do when all of the 200 Grimms Anniversary is over? All of these wonderful publications and articles!

Here's an article from the Washington Post discussing the Grimms and promoting Maria Tatar's new edition of The Annotated Brothers Grimm (The Bicentennial Edition). There's not too much new in this one for regular readers, but it's still a good start off point for sharing.

From Grimm Brothers, very grim tales by Neely Tucker:

Once published, the stories began to have a slow but steady rise in popularity, with an English translation in 1823. The brothers had anticipated an audience of fellow scholars. They were alarmed when they learned that parents were reading them to children — Rapunzel gets preggers up there in the tower! — and they put out an abridged edition, just for children, of 50 stories.

And over the course of six more editions and 40 years, they further rewrote the sex out of the stories, polished the prose, and made the once-oral tales into increasingly longer, literary flourishes of ad­ven­ture, magic, cruelty and heroism. Stepmothers were inserted as the frequent villain (getting moms off the hook), nobody has sex (at least in the story) and the little “Butcher” story — well, that one was dropped entirely.

By the dawn of the 20th century, the stories were hugely popular. It set into play a new canon of literature — stories for children that featured all the terrors of childhood, set into short, sharp tales that are filled with poison apples, magic spells, talking wolves and cannibals lurking in the shadows.

“It’s really the beginning of children’s imaginative literature,” Tatar says. The kind of book you might find in the Hogwarts library.

Adam Gidwitz: Defending Fairy Tales

 
Adam Gidwitz, author of A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly, is making the media rounds. The first book was a bonding reading book during one of my niece's short visits last year. The new one will most likely be part of our holidays this year. We read aloud and then she finished when she couldn't wait for us to finish it together.

Neither of Gidwitz's appearances should be missed by readers here. I can only share excerpts.

First, Gidwitz discusses his experiences and thoughts about filtering Grimms to children at the Wall Street Journal blog at In Defense of Real Fairy Tales:

While adults wring their hands over whether children should be exposed to the real Grimm, young people themselves have no such ambivalence. In my visits to schools I have witnessed the introduction of Grimm tales to thousands of children—elementary students in urban London, middle schoolers in rural Texas, high school students in suburban Baltimore—and the reaction is always the same: enthusiasm that borders on ecstasy.

Which is, I admit, a little strange. Grimm fairy tales are 200 years old. They do not feature guns or robots, they do not involve cliques or internet slang, they do not mention LeBron James or the WWE. They are not televised or computerized. They are the most primitive form of entertainment still in existence. How do they bewitch an auditorium full of tweens and adolescents? Why, contrary to adults’ expectations and apprehensions, are fairy tales so perfectly appropriate for these children?

Second, there is an interview with Monica Edinger with Huffington Post at Spooky, Spooky Fairy Tales:

Since you are a sort of fairy tale nerd (as am I) what is your take on my impression that for the general public fairies and fairy tales continue to have an image problem. Seems to me that for all the urban fantasy out there (in books, movies, and television shows), many still associate fairy tales with sparkly teeny tiny women flitting about with wings, pink, and Disney. Would you agree? Disagree?

I agree. And most of these adaptations don't really help the cause at all. Most of the current adaptations of Grimm fairy tales take details from the original tales and use them as a jumping off point to tell their own story and to do their own thing. They toss the form and the style of the fairy tale out the window. I think this is a great waste. Fairy tales have endured not only because of the stories they tell but also because of how they tell them. Fairy tales are told simply, matter-of-factly; they are brief; they deal with the deepest of emotions--pain, humiliation, betrayal, lostness (if you will)--without any hyperbole or drama. The Grimm fairy tales in crystalize our most essential emotions. These modern adaptations, for the most part, have nothing to do with our deepest human emotions. They miss the point of fairy tales altogether.

Another criticism fairy tales get is that they are violent yet you seem to have embraced that idea and run with it. Why?

The real fairy tales are indeed quite violent. But the violence is not gratuitous. On the contrary, it is essential to fairy tales' task. One of fairy tales' methods of speaking to the readers' deepest emotions is a technique I like to call "tears into blood." There is a wonderful Grimm tale called "The Seven Ravens," in which a father loves his one little daughter so much more than his seven boys that he wishes they would turn into birds and fly away--which they promptly do. When the little girl discovers that her brothers' disappearance is due to her father loving her more than he loved the boys, she runs away from home to find them. She is given a chicken bone by the stars (yep, you read that right), and told that it will open the Crystal Mountain where the boys are trapped. The little girl journeys to the mountain but, upon arriving, realizes that she has lost the chicken bone. At this moment, any real child's feelings of guilt would be extraordinary. Not only was it indirectly her fault that her brothers were turned into birds, but in losing the chicken bone she has lost the ability to save them.

Fairy Tale Tabs 10/17/2012

Is your computer overrun by tabs? Mine is. All the time. Eventually I either:

a) finish and close them
b) give up and close them
c) bookmark them hardly ever to return to them
d) have a computer freeze and lose them.

There are other scenarios, too, but those are the most common. So I am thinking about starting a new regular feature on the blog of rounding up my fairy tale related tabs and sharing them here. Many of these will be links to other blog posts, short news bits and other miscellaneous stuff. Then you can decide if you want to click through yourself.

So here are tabs from the last few days:


I wrote about the book yesterday, but here's a review at The Enchanted Inkpot for Two and Twenty Dark Tales: Dark Retellings of Mother Goose Rhymes.

At Spinning Straw Into Gold, there is a discussion of two different Little Mermaid poems, "The Mermaid Loses Her Voice" by Jeannine Hall Gailey and "The Mermaid Sets the Story Straight" by Debra Cash. There is also a post sharing "Nina Faces Reality" by Alex Schattner.

At Tales of Faerie, there is Jerry Griswold on Frog Prince and Fairy tale retellings and subgenres.

At Something to Read for the Train, there is Baba Yaga Returns to Poughkeepsie.

Book Trailer for Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version

 
Well, here's a little something to make you prefer the UK cover for Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version. A book trailer! The paper illustrations are by Cheong-ah Hwang and the animation is by Matthew Young.

It's short. And fun. Love the eyes.

New Book; The House Began to Pitch: Poems by Kelly Whiddon

The House Began to Pitch: Poems by Kelly Whiddon was just released this month. I always have a hard time finding poetry collections with fairy tale retellings and Whiddon let me know about the collection herself. Wonderful! You can also see a list of Whiddon's published poems on her site. I don't have a table of contents for the book which I know you readers like to see.

Book description:

Winner of the 2011 Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry The House Began to Pitch is a collection of poems that begins by following the lives of a man and a woman who grow up in the rural South in the fifties and sixties. Many of the poems are told through the lens of fairy tales as a comment on archetypal constructs that make up our ideals of home and family. The tragedies that affect the young lives of these characters influence them as they marry and age and as the book moves into the third section, which takes a more general and contemporary approach to domestic struggles. The poems favor the imagistic and melodic, always with an attempt to make sense out of the conflict and chaos of our daily lives. The settings of a small town and farm in a South gone-by give a dramatic backdrop to the struggles of the characters and create an illuminating merger with fairy tales such as Cinderella, Winnie the Pooh, The Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. These narratives serve as a familiar reminder of the dreams we hold in childhood and how reality fractures those story molds, in both good ways and bad.

About the Author

Kelly Whiddon is a writer and professor from Macon, Georgia. She has published poetry in Crab Orchard Review, Poetry International, Meridian, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Southern Poetry Review, among others, as well as the recent anthology Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club.

Two and Twenty Dark Tales: Dark Retellings of Mother Goose Rhymes

 
Two and Twenty Dark Tales: Dark Retellings of Mother Goose Rhymes is released today in the US and UK, same covers this time. And, despite the cover implications, it's for ages 12 and up. I can see some parents being wary of this one due to the cover which has more adult dark romance tones--unfortunate pose of the model. But these are YA authors and YA tales according to the publicity. I haven't read it yet but I'll believe the authors more than the cover. This is one of those times I'd throw a concept at hubby John, saying, "YA. Nursery Rhymes. Dark versions. Make a cover." And he'd do it so well...after some back and forth and slight marital strife because art creation can be tense.

Book description:

In this anthology, 20 authors explore the dark and hidden meanings behind some of the most beloved Mother Goose nursery rhymes through short story retellings. The dark twists on classic tales range from exploring whether Jack truly fell or if Jill pushed him instead to why Humpty Dumpty, fragile and alone, sat atop so high of a wall. The authors include Nina Berry, Sarwat Chadda, Leigh Fallon, Gretchen McNeil, and Suzanne Young.

Table of Contents:

Table of Contents
1. Dedication
2. Copyright
3. Introduction by Georgia McBride
4. Foreword by Francisco X. Stork
5. As Blue as the Sky and Just as Old by Nina Berry
6. Sing a Song of Six-Pence by Sarwat Chadda
7. Clockwork by Leah Cypess
8. Blue by Sayantani DasGupta
9. Pieces of Eight by Shannon Delany with Max Scialdone
10. Wee Willie Winkie by Leigh Fallon
11. Come Out to Play by Angie Frazier
12. I Come Bearing Souls by Jessie Harrell
13. The Lion and the Unicorn: Part the First by Nancy Holder
14. Life in a Shoe by Heidi K. Kling
15. Interlude: Humpty Dumpty, a poem by Georgia McBride
16. Candlelight by Suzanne Lazear
17. One for Sorrow by Karen Mahoney
18. Those Who Whisper by Lisa Mantchev
19. Little Miss Muffet by Georgia McBride
20. Sea of Dew (short version) by C. Lee McKenzie
21. Tick Tock by Gretchen McNeil
22. A Pocket Full of Posy by Pamela san Hylckama Vlieg
23. The Well by K. M. Walton
24. The Wish by Suzanne Young
25. A Ribbon of Blue by Michelle Zink
26. Sea of Dew (extended version) by C. Lee McKenzie
27. The Lion and the Unicorn: Part the Second by Nancy Holder
28. Publisher Acknowledgments
29. Author Acknowledgments

Halloween Fairy Tale Fun: Twisted Fairy Tales Paper Dolls

Not wanting to be a sexy fairy tale character for Halloween? (Don't worry, I won't be featuring those costumes here!) Well, the paper dolls in Twisted Fairy Tales Paper Dolls (Dover Paper Dolls) may inspire some other fairy tale themed costumes for you. Or you may just wonder how some things get published, but that's a conversation for another day. More than anything, these remind me of the Monster High Scary Tale dolls I shared a few weeks ago. It's also available in the UK.


Book description:

Snow White, Robin Hood, and a host of other fairy tale favorites take on an avant-garde aspect that's closer to renditions by Edward Gorey than Walt Disney. Twenty paper dolls include such reimagined characters as Hansel and Gretel, plus a brownie, pixie, troll, and other magical creatures. A spooky forest backdrop completes the scene.

Halloween Fairy Tale Fun: How to Cook Children: A Grisly Recipe Book for Gruesome Witches

How to Cook Children: A Grisly Recipe Book for Gruesome Witches by Martin Howard (Author), Colin Stimpson (Illustrator) is one of this week's offerings for pre-Halloween fun. This book is for a select audience of children and their adults and riffs off several fairy tales and other cultural references, such as Hansel and Gretel, as I'm sure you immediately imagined upon seeing the title. This is the second edition of the book so it has its fans! It's also available in the UK.

Book description:

Attention gastronomical ghouls and culinary crones! A mouth-watering collection of child-based recipes from the top chef witches around!

Every dish in this very unique cookbook has one thing in common: the main ingredient is children! Many famous culinary witches have contributed—from Barfa Stew-Wart to India's favorite Kideeta Skingh and Janie Groviller from Britain—and each of their recipes is introduced by the general editor Esmelia Sniff. Recipes range from such tangy delights as Seared Tina in Boy Sauce on a Bed of Fragrant Lice to the more filling Bratwurst and Upset Cabbage to sweet Flat Jacks. Featuring a dark subject matter but laugh-out-loud jokes, absurd characters, and beautiful illustrations, this is the perfect cookbook for parents and children alike.

"Quite simply the best book for cooking with children ever written. The recipes are mouth-watering and Esmelia Sniff is a laugh-out-loud kitchen nightmare. There are very few chefs who can change the way we think about food, but thanks to Esmelia and her pointy-hatted friends I'll be putting youngsters on the menu in all my restaurants from now on." —Gordon Ramsay

"The many small and large humorous pictures throughout are prominent against the white pages. Stimpson has worked with Walt Disney Feature Animation, and his slick, colorful style shows it." —School Library Journal