Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 142

Audrey Hepburn and Fairy Tales

In case you missed this on Maria Tatar's blog today, I had to share, too. She found it here. 
Always have to love Audrey Hepburn who we lost way too early. And Audrey made her own contribution to fairy tales--no, not her life and style as a modern fairy tale--but with one of her final projects before her death, Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales.

The recording received a Grammy for Audrey posthumously. Her voice is the usual Audrey voice with the charming intonations. It reminded me of her voiceovers for Sabrina but a little more intimate.

Here's a publisher description:

Audrey Hepburn’s narration brings to life four entertaining fairy tales for children and adults alike. Included here are “The Sleeping Princess,” “Tom Thumb,” “Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” charming stories that demonstrate the power of unselfish devotion and courage and the triumph of true love.

This GRAMMY® Award-winning performance by the late film legend features not only sound effects and music from Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” spread liberally throughout the hour but also a background story of the composer telling these stories to two young children, as remembered by one child when she was an elderly lady, all delivered in Audrey Hepburn's unique and cultured style.

REVIEW

“Her performance, although intended for children, is that of an adult performing for adults. There are no exaggerated intonations or characterizations. What we hear is what one would expect from Hepburn: a dignified performance that is dainty with precise enunciation and fitting inflections. The music is…a nice complement to her fine voice.”—AudioFile

Bargain Ebook: Seattle Cinderella by Gail Sattler

Seattle Cinderella by Gail Sattler is today's bargain ebook, an inspirational (i.e. Christian) romance this time which appears to take the Cinderella theme fairly literally. The ebook is priced $2.99.

Book description:

Cinderella lives—except her name is Cindy and she resides in Seattle! Cindy is forced to run her late father’s muffler shop. Will her step-sisters’ shenanigans and Luke Princeton’s charms only make her life even more unbearable? Cindy’s step-sister Annie has reformed her ways. But how will she prove it to the man she loves? Step-sister Zella is writing her own love story. But is she using a poison pen? Cindy’s godmother, Farrah, has caught the attentions of a younger man. Does she have the courage to love again? How far will God go to give these women a happy-ever-after?

From a review on Amazon, to describe the book's content better:

This book surprised me by being four different stories in one book. I enjoyed the continuation of each story into the next. The first book is the modern day Cinderella story, with the next two books being the tales of step-sister turned friend and all around good person. the final tale is the "fairy godmother" finding her happily ever after. Each book had a good arc of characters, good romance and endings that made me smile. Being broken into four tales made this book easy to read and fun. I'd consider this a great read for all lovers of fairy tales, modern romance and enjoyment! (Gina Brown Reading Team 20120207)

The Flint Heart by Katherine Paterson and John Paterson

The Flint Heart by Katherine Paterson and John Paterson is my featured book today since I plan to attend their session at the Southern Festival of Books.

Book description:

A robust and wildly entertaining fairy tale, freely abridged from Eden Phillpotts's 1910 fantasy and wryly retold by Katherine and John Paterson.

An ambitious Stone Age man demands a talisman that will harden his heart, allowing him to take control of his tribe. Against his better judgment, the tribe's magic man creates the Flint Heart, but the cruelty of it causes the destruction of the tribe. Thousands of years later, the talisman reemerges to corrupt a kindly farmer, an innocent fairy creature, and a familial badger. Can Charles and his sister Unity, who have consulted with fairies such as the mysterious Zagabog, wisest creature in the universe, find a way to rescue humans, fairies, and animals alike from the dark influence of the Flint Heart? This humorous, hearty, utterly delightful fairy tale is the sort for an entire family to savor together or an adventurous youngster to devour.

Spikeabell's Six Swans Word Cloud

So reader Spikeabell was irritated/inspired by my earlier post of Little Red Riding Hood by Affichionado and decided to try the concept herself. Her three minute experiment at Tagxedo produced the swan above, drawing from The Six Swans. As she said, "I didn't do any editing to emphasize the words, which would have made it more eye catching." But this is already more powerful than the Riding Hood one, is it not?

You can be creative/waste time today at either Tagxedo or Wordle and make your own images with fairy tale texts. If you make anything great to share, please add the link to a comment on this or the Riding Hood post. I'm rather tempted to make this into a contest!

Lil’ Red: An iPad App

From Revisit a Timeless Tale Made Modern with Lil’ Red – iPad App Review by Emily:

Lil’ Red brings a modern aesthetic to the well-known story of Little Red Riding Hood. As Lil’ Red’s creators know, they probably aren’t introducing readers to Red for the first time, so they get to have a little fun by creating beautiful streamlined graphics that tell the tale without a single written word.

To quote American Modernist Paul Rand, “Design is so simple, that’s why it’s so complicated.” Apps often fail because their design is unnecessarily complex or downright unattractive. Despite falling for the Big Bad Wolf’s Granny impersonation, Lil’ Red avoids this common pitfall and doesn’t get tripped up over aesthetics.

Lil’ Red is restrained, using only black, white, and red in its illustrations, yet these restrictions (along with her oversized black eyes and exaggerated lashes) set off Red’s playful, inquisitive nature.

There's more review, so do click through to read it. The app is available in the iTunes store.

Little Red Riding Hood by Affichionado

This is a poster available from Affichionado which was rather interesting. I wish it had a more distinctive wolf shape to it, don't you? It's something where I look at it and like the concept but think how I would change it, too.
From the press release:

The tales have been deconstructed and broken down into single words, the words are then compiled in order of frequency and the more frequent a word appears in the text, the more prominent it's presentation in the print, creating a hierarchy of size. Color schemes and placement have been carefully adapted to convey some of the message that is inherent in the work itself, reconstructing the text as a beautiful print with true soul.

Bargain Book: Serendipity Market by Penny Blubaugh

Serendipity Market by Penny Blubaugh has been on my TBR list for a while now. I own it in hardcover but anything on my Kindle is more convenient so it has been on my ebook watchlist for a while, too. The book has dropped to $4.74 in ebook format on Amazon in recent days--low enough in my current mood to justify buying it when I own a paper copy--so I've added it to my elibrary now, too. I consider a book below $4.99 to be a bargain worth considering while anything $2.99 and below from my wishlist is almost surely an automatic purchase.

But wait! If you prefer paper, the paperback is also bargain priced right now to $3.60, even less than the ebook. So you have a choice in what price and edition you prefer.

Back to Serendipity Market, here's the book description from publisher:

When Toby breathes on Mama Inez's bird-shaped invitations, giving them the power to fly, plans for the Serendipity Market begin. Soon, eleven honored guests travel from afar and make their way to the storytellers' tent to share their stories. Each tale proves what Mama Inez knows—that magic is everywhere. Sometimes it shows itself subtly—a ray of sun glinting on a gold coin, or a girl picking a rose without getting pricked by the thorn—and sometimes it makes itself known with trumpets and fireworks. But when real magic is combined with the magic of storytelling, it can change the world.

Review from Booklist, which explains the fairy tale connections:

Stories make the world go around in Blubaugh’s debut novel. Sometimes, when the world tilts off its axis, only the magical power of story can put things back to right. That’s where Mama Inez steps in. Using her gift of entering people’s lives in subtle yet mysterious ways, she gathers an eclectic group together for a night of storytelling. Each invited guest provides a talisman and a story, and together they set the world back to its rightful state. Weaving together unique variants of traditional tales, such as The Princess and the Pea, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, and Cinderella, this beautiful novel will be a delight to those who enjoy spin-offs of fairy tales and folktales. Readers will find themselves flipping back and forth to figure out how all the different stories hidden in the fold come together to form the greater whole of this charming book. Grades 6-10. --Melanie Koss

Saved by Fiction [and Fairy Tales] by Deborah Smith Douglas

Some rights reserved by Thyago - SORG|FX
I enjoyed this article and its valuation of fairy tales, especially for children. Douglas comes down heavily in the "children need fairy tales" camp with a Christian perspective. From Saved by fiction: Reading as a Christian practice by Deborah Smith Douglas at Christian Century:

By the time I was ten, I needed that life raft. That year, my mother suffered major head injury in a catastrophic car wreck. Despite surgery and extensive rehabilitation, the irreversible brain trauma caused radical changes in her personality and led to what is called (with no apparent irony) “progressive” dementia.

From that day forward, I had lost her—and would continue inexorably to lose her for the next 40 years that she survived. My father, unable to acknowledge or cope with his own tremendous loss, retreated into work and alcohol. Our lives began to unravel.

Reading became not just a pleasure but a way to survive— and not only a means of escaping a painful reality, but a way to find meaning in it. The paper nautilus my mother built, in which she carried me to the light, was for me a means of grace.

All those fairy tales came to my assistance: I knew that children could be thrown without warning into dark forests or dungeons, that they would have to be brave and clever to find their way out. Mothers disappeared. Chasms opened unexpectedly. Somehow the children I had met in fairy tales kept me company in those bewildering days. Their stories enabled me to hope, kept me from despair when my own mother seemed to be replaced by a sharp-tongued stranger, when all familiar landmarks seemed gone forever. Like those other children I might feel alone in the dark, but like them I came to trust that I would somehow be led to the right path. I had learned what child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment believed that all children will learn from fairy tales if we let them: terrible things may happen, but help and guidance will be given when needed.

In response to a woman who declared that fairy tales were bad for children because they frighten them, G. K. Chesterton sensibly pointed out that children are already frightened. Children know there are dragons in the world; what fairy tales give them is someone to kill the dragon. “At the four corners of a child’s bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd and St. George.” Withdrawing that guard of heroes will only leave the child to fight her battles alone. Chesterton knew that fairy tales reassure children that “these limitless terrors have a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than fear.”

J. R. R. Tolkien described the elemental functions of traditional fairy stories as recovery (from blindness, sickness or despair), escape (from danger or captivity), and consolation (a fleeting glimpse of “joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief”).

*****

Even reading detective novels can be a spiritual discipline. The mysteries I read voraciously now—like the fairy tales I read as a child—remind me to pay attention, seek the truth, watch for what lies hidden beneath the surface.

Both detective fiction and fairy tales offer escape from captivity, but never flight from responsibility. What matters is not security but encounter, revelation, transformation, risk, participation in mystery, commitment to great ends, allegiance to a side. The children in Narnia have been called there for a purpose; they have work to do on Aslan’s side.

Tonight: Beauty and the Beast Premieres on the CW

 
Beauty and the Beast premieres on the CW tonight. Above is a video with the stars discussing the fairy tale and original series inspiration--there isn't much. But there is also talk that the Beast is going to morph more over the series as the DNA tampering (or whatever it is) takes over more of his body. That could be interesting....

 From 'B&B' CAST ON TAKING ON A CLASSIC FAIRY TALE By ROBERT PACE:

"With every show like this that's a remake or a re-imagining...you kind of start with a blank slate in some ways," said Kreuk, who played "Lana Lang" on Smallville. "You get to learn from what other things did previously, but it's a re-imagining. It's something entirely new, so I think you have to approach not with the other stuff in mind but just with 'What do we want to do with this new material?'"

The novelty of the show is accompanied by a modern setting, with Kreuk playing a detective and Ryan playing a military doctor as the respective beauty and beast. Although the modern adaptation creates a new atmosphere for the show, Ryan assures that the show still preserves key themes from the original tale.

"We keep the themes of [the original] 'Beauty and the Beast,' which is what we bring from the old stories or re-imaginings, and make it our own" the New Zealand native said.

So who is going to watch?

Unsettling Wonder

We have a new online journal with a fairy tale inspiration. You can read about Unsettling Wonder on its site, but I enjoyed the genesis story at the general editor's blog which you might not have as readily seen elsewhere. (I'm a few days late with the announcement.) Good luck to the publication and thank you to everyone making it happen. We can always enjoy an extra place to share fairy tale love.

From John Patrick Pazdziora's blog, The Paradoxes of Mr Pond:

Remember how I was doing a read-through of the Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmarchen? Well, the new iteration of Unsettling Wonder is almost completely not at all like that. Except that I got the idea while I was doing the Grimm read through. There were all these strange and funny little tales that no one ever talks about, all these weird little folktale variants.

So I wanted to make a place where the more offbeat, less exploited tales could be re-discovered. And, as other friends and editors came on board, including my long-time blogalectic sparring partner, Jenna St. Hilaire, I thought—making this could be a lot of fun.

The new Unsettling Wonder is a publishing imprint of Papaveria Press that includes both an online journal and various print publications. It lives at www.unsettlingwonder.com, and the website will have not only the journal, but regular posts from the editors and guest writers about folklore and fairy tales—including artist and author interviews, book reviews, and so on.

As the marvellous Katherine Langrish, UW’s folktale editor I’m happy to say, wrote at her blog:

Unsettling Wonder has only just been born, and in the way of fairytale parents we, its founders, are still looking it proudly, scratching our heads and wondering what it will make of life. Has it been born in a caul, or under a lucky star? Will its godmother be the Fairy of Good Fortune, or the sinister black-cowled figure of La Muerte? Is it even a child, or just a bristly half-hedgehog? Anyway, do come to the christening!

And Unsettling Wonder is accepting submissions. Our first issue is themed on Wonder Voyages; you can find the formal call for papers here.