Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 42

Coloring Book Week: A Brothers Grimm Coloring Book and Other Classic Fairy Tales: Escape into a World of Fantasy and Imagination by Adam Fisher

A Brothers Grimm Coloring Book and Other Classic Fairy Tales: Escape into a World of Fantasy and Imagination by Adam Fisher was released in November. This is one of many new fairy tale themed coloring books for grown-ups that have arisen since the bestselling phenomenon started by the Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest & Coloring Book and others.


It's amazing how this coloring book therapy and relaxation trend has taken off so greatly for grown-ups. My friends and I did this for years but suddenly it is a fad and I think, "Duh, I should have promoted that. I never stopped coloring."


I am tempted to collect these since I enjoy coloring although I rarely do so since I spend my free and leisure time editing books instead. But since there are many of these on offer now, I am going to share posts this weeks of the new and old publications available as coloring books for grown-ups. And I hate saying "adult" since it sounds like they are mature rated, although some admittedly are. But we will avoid those here.


Book description:

Fall under the spell of the folklore and fairy tales all over again in this gorgeous new coloring book for all ages.

Rapunzel. Hansel and Gretel. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Snow White. We've known these characters since we were children, but in this elegant new coloring book, these characters are waiting to be brought back to vivid life, through coloring. Based off of the masterpieces of the Brothers Grimm, acclaimed British artist Adam Fisher has created a black and white wonderland just waiting to be filled in.

The tales originally began with "once upon a time," and now The Brothers Grimm Coloring Book: And Other Classic Fairy Tales offers a soothing escape into a world of inspiration and fantasy―where you create your own unexpected and colorful ending!

New Book: Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Wash Your Hair!: A Story About Hair Hygiene by Steve Smallman

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Wash Your Hair!: A Story About Hair Hygiene (Fairytales Gone Wrong) by Steve Smallman (Author) and Neil Price (Illustrator) was released this past October.

This one reminds me of the following skit by Studio C:



Book description:

In Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Wash Your Hair! three princes try to rescue Rapunzel from her tower. However, Rapunzel never washes her hair so it's greasy and filthy--too slippery to climb! Luckily one of the princes is a hairdresser and knows just how to save Rapunzel and her unruly hair. This series is a welcome addition for parents looking for picture books with a message.

Bargain Ebook: Desperately Ever After by Laura Kenyon

Desperately Ever After: Book One: Desperately Ever After Series by Laura Kenyon is one sale TODAY ONLY for 99 cents in ebook format.

Book description:

A finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards 2014 and an Amazon Top 100 seller in both Women's Fiction Fantasy And Humor! Stephanie Evanovich, New York Times Bestselling author of Big Girl Panties, says "Laura Kenyon makes happily ever after desperately delicious!"

Imagine what might happen if our most beloved fairy tale princesses were the best of friends and had the dreams, dilemmas, and libidos of the modern woman. How would their stories unfold after the wedding bells stopped ringing? Set in a fictional realm based on New York City, DESPERATELY EVER AFTER sprinkles women's fiction with elements of fantasy, and encourages readers to rethink everything they know about happy endings.

Years after turning her husband from beast back to man and becoming his queen, Belle finds out she's finally going to have a child. But before she can announce the wondrous news, she catches him cheating and watches her "happily ever after" go up in flames. Turning to her friends for the strength to land with grace, she realizes she's not the only one at a crossroads:

Cinderella, a mother of four drowning in royal duties, is facing her 30th birthday and questioning everything she's done (or hasn't) with her life.

Rapunzel, a sex-crazed socialite and one-woman powerhouse, is on a self-destructive quest to make up for 20 years locked away in a tower.

Penelopea, an outsider with a mother-in-law from hell, is harboring a secret that could ruin everything at any moment.

One part Sex and the City, two parts Desperate Housewives, and three parts Brothers Grimm, DESPERATELY EVER AFTER picks up where the original tales left off--and reimagines them a la Gregory Maguire's Wicked. With the wit of authors like Jennifer Weiner and the vision of ABC's Once Upon a Time, the women of DESPERATELY EVER AFTER rescue each other from life's trials with laughter, wine, and a scandalous new take on happily ever after.

New Book: From Fairy Tale to Film Screenplay: Working with Plot Genotypes by Terence Patrick Murphy

From Fairy Tale to Film Screenplay: Working with Plot Genotypes by Terence Patrick Murphy was released in late 2015. I haven't seen a copy of it yet, but the table of contents offers some great fairy tales and some popular films.

Book description:

In Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979), Syd Field first popularized the Three-Act Paradigm of Setup, Confrontation and Resolution for conceptualizing and creating the Hollywood screenplay. For Field, the budding screenwriter needs a clear screenplay structure, one which includes two well-crafted plot points, the first at the end of Act I, the second at the end of Act II. By focusing on the importance of the four essentials of beginning and end, and the two pivotal plot points, Field did the Hollywood film industry an enormous service. Nonetheless, although he handles the issue of overall structure expertly, Field falls down when offering the screenwriter advice on how to successfully build each of the three individual Acts. This is because Field did not recognize the importance of another layer of analysis that underpins the existence of plot points. This is the level of the plot genotype.

Plot genotypes are the compositional schemas of particular stories. They are sets of instructions, written in the language of the plot function, for executing particular plots. This book will offer you a richer theory of plot structure than the one Field outlines. It will do this not by contradicting anything Field has to say about the Hollywood paradigm, but by complementing it with a deeper level of analysis. It outline the plot genotypes for The Frog Prince, The Robber Bridegroom, Puss-in-Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood, and will show how these genotypes provide the underpinnings for the film screenplays of Pretty Woman, Wrong Turn, The Mask, and Psycho. By means of a detailed study of these four Hollywood screenplays, you will be able to offer a much richer description of what is going on at any particular point in a screenplay. In this way, you will become much sharper at understanding how screenplays work. And you will become much better at learning how to write coherent screenplays yourself.

Table of Contents:

1 From the Hollywood Paradigm to the Proppian Plot Genotype 1
2 Vladimir Propp’s Functional Analysis of the Fairy Tale 9
3 A Functional Analysis of Charles Perrault’s Cinderella 16
4 Formulating the Concept of the Plot Genotype 27
5 The Robber Bridegroom Genotype 31
6 The Robber Bridegroom Genotype in Wrong Turn (2003) 46
7 The Frog Prince Genotype 56
8 The Frog Prince Genotype in Pretty Woman (1990) 66
9 The Puss-in-Boots Genotype 102
10 The Puss-in-Boots Genotype in The Mask (1994) 111
11 The Little Red Riding Hood Genotype 144
12 The Little Red Riding Hood Genotype in Psycho (1960) 151
13 Conclusion 172
Appendix: Plot Genotype Theory and the Hero’s Journey 177
Notes 182
Bibliography 188
Index 192

New Book: The Princess and the Giant by Caryl Hart

The Princess and the Giant by Caryl Hart (Author) and Sarah Warburton (Illustrator) was released this past October.


Book description:

Princess Sophie is exhausted, and it's all because that grumpy old giant up on the beanstalk can't sleep. His stomps and stamps keep everyone awake. But as the resourceful Princess Sophie reads her favorite book of fairy tales, she wonders if she might just have the answer. She bravely climbs the beanstalk carrying a tasty bowl of porridge, a cuddly teddy bear, and cozy blanket to help soothe the giant. But nothing works until finally Sophie hits upon the perfect thing — a bedtime story! Everyone lives (and sleeps) happily ever after, but when Sophie then teaches the giant how to read himself, it is the most perfect ending of all.

Google Doodle: Charles Perrault's 388th Birthday

As Google has charmingly reminded us with a special Google Doodle by Sophie Diao, today is Charles Perrault's 388th birthday!

The media has jumped into the celebration thanks to the Google Doodle with articles like Charles Perrault: the father of the modern fairytale at The Guardian which offers this quote:

The stories he chose, writes Neil Philip in The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, might have been old, but what he did with them was new. “Writing for a jaded audience at the sumptuous court of Louis XIV of France, he entertained them with the simple stories of the people. He gave the tales a more courtly dress and a more knowing air than they would have had in a peasant’s cottage, but he did not make fun of them or spoil them with literary embroidery. He let them speak for themselves, and in the process revealed that what they had to say was not so simple after all.”

Having read and studied Perrault's work in French and English translation over the years, I have only come to appreciate him more and more. He was a master at retelling old tales with new skins and adding details that have become ubiquitous to the tales in modern times. From glass slippers to Sauce Robert, his stories live on over three hundred years later, a legacy I think any of us could wish and hope for.

Bargain Ebook: Thorn by Intisar Khanani for 99 cents

Thorn by Intisar Khanani is on sale for 99 cents in ebook format. The novel retells "The Goose Girl."

Book description:

For Princess Alyrra, choice is a luxury she's never had ... until she's betrayed.

Princess Alyrra has never enjoyed the security or power of her rank. Between her family's cruelty and the court's contempt, she has spent her life in the shadows. Forced to marry a powerful foreign prince, Alyrra embarks on a journey to meet her betrothed with little hope for a better future.

But powerful men have powerful enemies--and now, so does Alyrra. Betrayed during a magical attack, her identity is switched with another woman's, giving Alyrra the first choice she's ever had: to start a new life for herself or fight for a prince she's never met. But Alyrra soon finds that Prince Kestrin is not at all what she expected. While walking away will cost Kestrin his life, returning to the court may cost Alyrra her own. As Alyrra is coming to realize, sometime the hardest choice means learning to trust herself.

Bargain Ebook: The Snow Child: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize in Letters: Fiction Finalists) by Eowyn Ivey

Merry Christmas! The Snow Child: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize in Letters: Fiction Finalists) by Eowyn Ivey is on sale TODAY ONLY for $3.99 from a usual $10 price range in ebook format in the US.

The novel is in part inspired by a Russian snow child tale available on SurLaLune at The Little Daughter of the Snow. If you read it, you will recognize the book described here.

This tale shouldn't be confused with The Snow Child ATU Type 1362 which deals more with a wife's questionable loyalty to her husband. This tale is much more bittersweet in which a couple longs for a child together and create one out of snow. It is a bittersweet tale, especially for the childless.

Book description:

A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska.

Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in the raw Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before.

The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the pair are surprised to find themselves building a snowman - or rather a snow girl - together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared, and Jack can't quite shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure - a child? - running through the spruce trees in the dawn light. And how to explain the little but very human tracks Mabel finds at the edge of their property?

Written with the clarity and vividness of the Russian fairytale from which it takes its inspiration, The Snow Child is an instant classic - the story of a couple who take a child into their hearts, all the while knowing they can never truly call her their own.

And here is a book trailer:

SurLaLuner Wishlist 2015: L. Bradshaw

L. Bradshaw shared a wishlist with us as part of the December SurLaLune Giveaway: What Fairy Tale Things Are On Your Holiday Wish List?. I'm enjoying these so please keep sharing!

And on to L.B.'s list:

I'm going for a mix of fairy tale themed and FAIRY TALE ;)

1. A magical talking horse


(Heidi's comments: Probably not Falada, but that is what always comes to my mind first.)
2. A complete set of the Lang Fairy Books

   
   
   
(Heidi's comments: I remember how thrilled I was to complete my library of them several moons ago.)
3. A copy of Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange


Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange (Hardcover Classics) by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Illustrator), Malcolm C. Lyons (Translator), Robert Irwin (Introduction)
4. A door that opens wherever I want (to London! to Narnia! to the 1800s)

(Heidi's comments: Then I start thinking about what the door would look like and I spend way to much time looking at door pictures...)
5. An original Arthur Rackham

(Heidi's thoughts: I'm not sure which I would pick since I love so many of his. But it's a grand impossibility to daydream about. Aschenputtel above would be a top contender for me.)
Can't wait to see what others are wishing for!!

Rumpelstiltskin Card Game

Thanks to the Strategy Board Games Deal of the Day today, I discovered the Rumpelstiltskin Card Game. I wanted to give the game a separate post since there are plenty of images and such to share. I somehow missed this one and wanted to give it its due separate from posting about the sale.


Product Description:

If I want to win our game, I first must guess your true name! In Rumpelstiltskin, you and a friend take the roles of fey folk who have decided to engage in a name guessing contest. You must use your magical mischief to learn your opponent's secret name while protecting your own! Contents 20 Game cards, 2 Reference cards, 5 Victory point tokens Rulebook.

Here's some images of the cards. I was very thrilled to see that another Rumpelstiltskin variant is inside--Tim Tit Tot--usually Tom Tit Tot, but I am not quibbling. Someone actually read a fairy tale or two before inventing the game.






And if you want to see the game in action with a gamer's review, watch this: