Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 151

New Book: Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst

Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst is released today and has been receiving stellar reviews. While this book isn't a fairy tale retelling, it draws from folklore and mythology to create a new fantasy world of Durst's making. I know there are several Durst fans here so I wanted to share the book today.

Book description:

In a desert world of sandstorms and sand-wolves, a teen girl must defy the gods to save her tribe in this mystical, atmospheric tale from the author of Drink, Slay, Love.

Liyana has trained her entire life to be the vessel of a goddess. The goddess will inhabit Liyana’s body and use magic to bring rain to the desert. But Liyana’s goddess never comes. Abandoned by her angry tribe, Liyana expects to die in the desert. Until a boy walks out of the dust in search of her.

Korbyn is a god inside his vessel, and a trickster god at that. He tells Liyana that five other gods are missing, and they set off across the desert in search of the other vessels. For the desert tribes cannot survive without the magic of their gods. But the journey is dangerous, even with a god’s help. And not everyone is willing to believe the trickster god’s tale.

The closer she grows to Korbyn, the less Liyana wants to disappear to make way for her goddess. But she has no choice: She must die for her tribe to live. Unless a trickster god can help her to trick fate—or a human girl can muster some magic of her own.

And here are Durst's fairy tale inspired novels, too:

   

Mermaid Travel Sites

This article was featured yesterday on CNN.com. From Mermaids: Entertainers with a tail By Katherine Dorsett Bennett, CNN:

Mythical mermaids have fascinated humans for centuries, and alluring creatures in bikini tops and fish tails seem to be keeping the love alive.

One of the first mermaid shows in the United States can be traced back to Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida, where mermaids debuted synchronized ballet moves at an 18-seat theater in October 1947.

Mermaid shows have evolved from that Florida roadside attraction off U.S. 19. Here are five spots where mermaids are making a big splash.

(The article discusses each location, so go there to read more, but I have found links for each location and included them here:

The Sip 'n Dip Lounge: Great Falls, Montana

Downtown Aquarium: Denver, Colorado

Dive Bar: Sacramento, California

Wreck Bar: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Silverton Casino: Las Vegas, Nevada

And did you know that my Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World book will probably be the bestselling book in the SurLaLune library by the end of the year? It has already surpassed all of the books but Sleeping Beauties!

SurLaLune, Fairy Tale Fashion and Sleek Magazine

Back in the spring I was asked by Lauren Cochrane to answer some questions for an article about fairy tale inspired fashion for Sleek Magazine. My interview ended up with a short blurb in the article titled "Scary Tales" in issue 34 of the magazine. The article isn't online so I thought I would share the interview with you here. For fun, I will bold and blue the parts of the interview that ended up in the article. It provides a glimpse of how journalism and interviews work, too.

- when did you start your blog?

Heidi: The SurLaLune Fairy Tales website started in 1998 and I added the blog to the site in 2009. It has become a popular place to learn about fairy tales in popular culture.

- have you always been a fan of fairytales?

Heidi: Yes, I have always enjoyed fairy tales and became a greater fan as I grew older and learned more about their histories. Although I also work with children’s literature, fairy tales in their original forms are anything but.

- what do you think is the appeal of them? Is is about escapism?

Heidi: There is an element of escapism with fairy tales, especially as they are often presented by the popular media. However, the tales themselves resonate with their audiences on many levels since the deceptively simple stories allow us to interpret the tales in many ways based on our personal experiences. There is more scope for imagination in their elemental characters and plots, hence such wildly different interpretations between films like “Mirror, Mirror” and “Snow White and the Huntsman.” The most popular, romantic tales have happy endings, yes, but the struggle to get there is often dark and overwhelming, thus the ongoing debate about their suitability for young children. The tales provide hope that we can overcome the hardships of an unfair world and ultimately triumph.

- have you seen the popularity of them grow recently with films like Mirror Mirror etc?

Heidi: Fairy tales are always popular but their visibility is certainly high right now. I’ve seen an increase in interest in Snow White on my site, for example, but Cinderella still trumps her in traffic. People are always aware of the tales—their frequent appearance in advertising illustrates that fairy tales are always part of our public awareness. Overall, the current popularity of fairy tales comes from the success of the fantasy genre the past ten years or so thanks to Harry Potter and Twilight which drew on folklore themselves (edited to "which draws on folklore itself"). Fairy tales are inexpensive as part of the public domain and provide lots of opportunity for writers and other artists to develop a wide range of storylines. The trend for high concept fantasy fairy tales is great right now, but the early 2000s provided several films that were fairy tale inspired, more in the chick lit, modern vein, such as Cinderella Story and Sydney White.

- what do you think of fashion’s trend for fairytales? As I said, Miu Miu, Rodarte and Valentino are good collections to look at here. I’ve put links to the collections here: Valentino and Rodarte and Miu Miu.

Heidi: I love the influence of traditional textiles and clothing elements, of course. The capes of Miu Miu obviously invoke Little Red Riding Hood while the lace and other traditional patterns and textiles hearken back to the past times found in fairy tales. Some of the more basic designs also recall the simpler peasant clothing of some fairy tale characters, such as Cinderella before she is dressed for the ball.

There are simply beautiful, romantic pieces in all of these collections. Some traditional influences are visible, especially in the Valentino and Miu Miu collections, but the diversity between these collections, all claiming a fairy tale influence or at least being assigned one, shows how flexible the fairy tale label can be.

- do you think it’s about being a fairytale princess?!

Heidi: There will always be an element of wanting to be a princess, of feeling special as our interest in royalty and celebrity illustrates. But the genre is so large and wide ranging that I can’t distill the popularity of fairy tales into that alone. There are also fans who adore the dark, twisted interpretations, preferring the horror, many elements of which exist in the earliest known versions of the tales. Snow White’s mother/stepmother does much worse things to the heroine in other versions of the tale than simply order her death and heart on a platter.

The majority of fans fall into the middle between the extreme romance and the extreme horror. They prefer the stories for their realism—I know that sounds funny when fairy tales have a connotation of happy stories in popular culture—but the tales only have a happy ending, the journey to the end is very dark and dreary with tears and pain along the way. We become heroes of the tales as we read them or otherwise experience them and that is empowering and cathartic.

- why do you think fairytales appeal to fashion designers?

Heidi: Designers enjoy the romance and want to appeal to their audience, of course, which means using popular trends for inspiration. But the possibilities for using different cultures and fashion histories is great when the term “fairy tale” is invoked. I’ve seen designers use Russian fairy tales, French fairy tales, etc. as inspiration which means they can use a multitude of cultures and still be on trend. In popular culture, if it is romantic and feminine it equates with fairy tales which gives designers a lot of leeway. We are living in a time when women are more empowered but still allowed to be more feminine than in other recent decades where gender neutral clothing was used to mask gender. The abundance of lace and more traditional patterns and florals makes for pretty clothing that women enjoy and feel attractive wearing.

In a lesser known fairy tale still very popular in France, Donkeyskin hides behind rags and animals skins to make herself unattractive and untouchable as she forges out into the world alone. Yet she uses beautiful dresses to claim her royal birthright and achieve her place as a queen and leader. Beautiful clothes provide her with positive attention, something most of us desire. These designers create beautiful clothing for a variety of tastes and we want to wear them to demonstrate our own attractiveness and power.

Fairy Tale Fashion in The Tennessean

This appeared last week in my local newspaper but irony is that I found it through Google News Search. Then I remembered I did an interview for a fairy tale and fashion article this past spring for Sleek Magazine, not The Tennessean. So I will be sharing that today as well as this from Fall fashion is all about fairy tales, Posted on Aug. 31, 2012 by Cathi at The Tennessean:

Once upon a time there lived a woman, who toiled day in and day out — paying bills, carpooling and juggling work and home life. She longed for a respite, just a tiny bit of the fairy tales she loved as a child.

Well, fashion heard her unspoken desire for fantasy, both good and evil, and has delivered for fall.

While there are countless trends this autumn — the ankle pant, a structured peplum, leather and an abundance of prints — the overriding theme in almost every collection is a dreamy, fairy-tale-like quality.

There is a slideshow to be seen so click through to see.

BOLO Again: SurLaLune and SWatH

According to the retailers page on the Snow White and the Huntsman website, it looks like the exclusive content in which I appear will be found on the Wal-Mart exclusive editions as I suspected. The biggest retailers of the DVD will be Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target so it had to be one of the the three. I wasn't paid to appear on the feature about the History of Snow White but I know it wasn't an inexpensive endeavour so a major retailer had to be involved.

Of course the music extra is the one mentioned--somehow the history of the tale is probably not as much of a seller to non-fairy tale fiends like us, yes?

As you can see, the blurb still doesn't confirm but it's the only disc to have exclusive content mentioned instead of a special edition cover or book like the other retailers. The Wal-Mart site is especially unhelpful but ordering from them online or picking up the disc in store starting on Tuesday should produce your own copy of the History of Snow White extra which includes my talking head. Until then, we'll wait and see.

If you missed my original post about this, here it is.

Quote of the Day: Old Wine and Old Wives' Tales

Old wine is often all the better for being re-bottled;
perhaps old wives’ tales are like that, too.

—from "Big Claus and Little Claus"
by R. J. Yeatman and W. C. Sellar

Found in The Fairies Return: Or, New Tales for Old (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales). It was so charming, I didn't want to lose it in the long post about the book. It also opens up Maria Tatar's Introduction to the book.

New Book: The Fairies Return: Or, New Tales for Old (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales)

The Fairies Return: Or, New Tales for Old (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales) is officially released today although it has been shipping for a few weeks, I think. I received a review copy of this one from the publisher and realized I was completely unaware of the original edition. How did I miss that? It's a happy addition to my folklore library, of course.

The stories, oddly enough, reminded the most of the work of Anne Thackeray Ritchie who set her own fairy tale retellings in her current times without the magic or fantasy. There is about a fifty year gap between her work and the stories collected here which makes it all an interesting study of Britain's literary history, too. Her work is historical fiction now just as these collected stories are to us, but it's intriguing to see how past authors used fairy tales in their modern fiction. These tales are much more satirical than Ritchie, too.

Book description:

Originally issued in 1934, The Fairies Return was the first collection of modernist fairy tales ever published in England, and it marked the arrival of a satirical classic that has never been surpassed. Even today, this reimagining of fourteen timeless tales--from "Puss in Boots" to "Little Red Riding Hood"--is still fresh and bold, giving readers a world steeped not in once upon a time, but in the here and now.

Longtime favorites in this playfully subversive collection are retold for modern times and mature sensibilities. In "Jack the Giant Killer," Jack becomes a trickster who must deliver England from the hands of three ogres after a failed government inquiry. "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" is set in contemporary London and the world of financial margins and mergers. In "The Little Mermaid," a young Canadian girl with breathtaking swimming skills is lured by the temptations of Hollywood. And Cinderella becomes a spinster and holy woman, creating a very different happily ever after. These tales expose social anxieties, political corruption, predatory economic behavior, and destructive appetites even as they express hope for a better world. A new introduction from esteemed fairy-tale scholar Maria Tatar puts the collection in context.

From stockbrokers and socialites to shopkeepers and writers, the characters in The Fairies Return face contemporary challenges while living in the magical world of fairy tales.

Peter Davies (1897-1960) was the rumored inspiration for Peter Pan, the daredevil character created by his adoptive father, author J. M. Barrie. Davies was the founder of the publishing house Peter Davies Ltd. Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and chair of the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. She is the editor of The Annotated Peter Pan and the author of Enchanted Hunters (both Norton), among many other books.

You can read a PDF of Maria Tatar's introduction on the Princeton University Press's website to give you a preview of the book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction
Maria Tatar
1

Jack the Giant Killer
A. E. Coppard
39

Godfather Death
Clemence Dane
65

The Fisherman and His Wife
E. M. Delafield
95

Little Snow-White
Lord Dunsany
121

Aladdin
Anna Gordon Keown
137

Sindbad the Sailor
Eric Linklater
163

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
A. G. Macdonell
186

Puss in Boots
Helen Simpson
208

The Little Mermaid
Lady Eleanor Smith
228

Little Red Riding-Hood
E. oe. Somerville
249

Cinderella
Robert Speaight
271

'O, If I Could but Shiver!'
Christina Stead
302

The Sleeping Beauty
G. B. Stern
325

Big Claus and Little Claus
R. J. Yeatman and W. C. Sellar
354

Author Biographies 365

And more about the Oddly Modern Fairy Tales edited by Jack Zipes:

Oddly Modern Fairy Tales is a series dedicated to publishing unusual literary fairy tales produced mainly during the first half of the twentieth century. International in scope, the series includes new translations, surprising and unexpected tales by well-known writers and artists, and uncanny stories by gifted yet neglected authors. Postmodern before their time, the tales in Oddly Modern Fairy Tales transformed the genre and still strike a chord.

The Cloak of Dreams: Chinese Fairy Tales (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales). B. Balázs; J. Zipes, et al., eds. and trans.


Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales (Oddly Modern Fairy Tales). K. Schwitters.

One Day Bargains: All Four Bayern Books

   
TODAY ONLY: All four books in Shannon Hale's Bayern series are $1.99 each in ebook format on Amazon. The series includes: The Goose Girl (Books of Bayern) and Enna Burning (Books of Bayern) and River Secrets (Books of Bayern) and Forest Born (Books of Bayern).

The first is inspired by The Goose Girl fairy tale, of course.

Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, spends the first years of her life under her aunt's guidance learning to communicate with animals. As she grows up Ani develops the skills of animal speech, but is never comfortable speaking with people, so when her silver-tongued lady-in-waiting leads a mutiny during Ani's journey to be married in a foreign land, Ani is helpless and cannot persuade anyone to assist her. Becoming a goose girl for the king, Ani eventually uses her own special, nearly magical powers to find her way to her true destiny. Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can become queen of the people she has made her own.

Fairy Tale Feasts at Nigella.com

Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers and Eaters by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple (her daughter) was recently featured on Nigella Lawson's website. That was a coup for the book, especially considering it is now six years old and still in print, too.

Nigella's intro:

I have always had quite an obsession with food-based fairy tales - such as The Magic Pot of Porridge - and indeed have even written one of my own, so was delighted to find this collection of food fairy tales, complete with recipes. It is utterly charming, as is the recipe for Brer Rabbit's Carrot Soup, which I've chosen for you this week.

The full recipe is there so you can literally get a taste of one of the book's recipes as well as how they are written--from materials to ingredients to detailed instructions and ways to vary, the book is a great starter cookbook for young audiences while still interesting for adults, too.

Snow White and Rose Red: A Pop-Up Fairytale (Fairytale Pop-ups) illustrated by Rachel Coyne

 
Snow White and Rose Red: A Pop-Up Fairytale (Fairytale Pop-ups) illustrated by Rachel Coyne was set for a June 2012 release in the UK and August in the US but it appears to have either already sold out or not been published at this point. I haven't learned which is the real answer--Tango Books, the publisher, tends to have smaller print runs so it could be the latter. But the page for the book on their site also states: "Publication of this book is timed to coincide with the release of two Snow White and Rose Red movies." Well, unless I missed something, I think they were thinking about the Snow White films released this year. I don't know of a recent Snow White and Rose Red film, do you?

Either way, Rachel Cloyne's artwork should not be missed and I found most of the following images for the book on one of her portfolio sites. There is also a recent YouTube video of the book from the publisher but the embedding has been disabled. (Grumble, grumble, grumble--makes it much harder to promote a book if I can't embed! Stats prove you get more views with embedding than requiring readers like you to click through and watch.)