Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 71

The Snow Queen illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

The Snow Queen illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline was released last year and I never shared it on the blog. Many versions of Snow Queen are running low on inventory this season since there is a high demand for anything even remotely related to Disney's Frozen and ABC's Once Upon a Time. Snow Queen is one of my favorite fairy tale for illustration. All of the snow and ice make for some beautifully stunning art. This book is no exception.


Book description:

Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, the classic tale of friendship, love, and bravery, is beautifully retold with lavish illustrations by master artist Bagram Ibatoulline.

Best friends Kai and Gerda would do anything for each other. When Kai starts to behave cruelly and disappears, Gerda sets out on an epic quest to save Kai from the evil Snow Queen. But can Gerda break the Snow Queen's enchantment and complete the final task?

Full of magic and wonder, this new picture book will delight fans of beloved classics like "Thumbelina," "The Princess and the Pea," and "The Little Mermaid."

Little Golden Books Fairy Tales Library

It's the holidays and the challenge of getting gifts for ten nephews, nieces, and godchildren has arrived again. It's always hampered with the fact that three of those children's birthdays also fall within five weeks of the holiday so I have to consider those gifts when choosing the others.

I like to give books, being an aunt and godmother to several readers, but choosing books for all of them is also challenging. And with my personal passions, I like to share fairy tales with the children, too, without boring them. I love picture books for sharing fairy tales and there are many, many wonderful books out there. Again, the challenge of price, individual tastes keeps me from being as lavish as I would like. One of the nieces is receiving the brunt of the fairy tale themed gifts from me this year since she is firmly entrenched in her princess stage of childhood development. She is receiving Enchanted Forest - Children's Game and The Golden Book of Fairy Tales (Golden Classics) for Christmas and birthday this year. But with the recent resurgence of the Golden Books library, I am tempted to add on a few inexpensive titles to their gifts.

I have a great affection for the Little Golden Books because they were the literature of my earliest years. My personal library started with many of the Little Golden Books library and one of my all time favorite childhood books was a Little Golden Book: The Monster at the End of This Book. My love of reading was fostered by owning these books that my parents could afford for me. So when I see those golden spines, I have a happy reaction, even though I don't always consider the illustrations or writing to be the absolute best in some of the titles. But some are great--after all some well known illustrators contributed to the line or got their start there.

I'm seeing Little Golden Books in more places again and they have been printing and reprinting many fairy tales. Many titles are Disney related since Disney has a partnership, but not all are. Since Disney is easy enough to find if you want it, that's not my focus. I want to celebrate the other fairy tales from Little Golden Books, some of them tales that children do not know so well and some that are harder to find in any picture book format, such as Wild Swans and Twelve Dancing Princesses--although there are some beautiful editions of both out there! So here's an easy, inexpensive way to add a fairy tale or two to a child's library for about $4 a pop this season.

And, if these sell well, perhaps Golden will also resurrect titles of years past like Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood.
First on the list is The Princess and the Pea (Little Golden Book) illustrated by Jana Christy, pictured at the top of this post.


The Blue Book of Fairy Tales: "Three favorite fairy tales—Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, and Toads and Diamonds—are brought beautifully to life in this classic Little Golden Book from 1959, with breathtaking illustrations by the inimitable Gordon Laite." I've ordered this one for myself, too. I never owned it as a child and wish I had!




The Wild Swans (Little Golden Books) illustrated by Gordon Laite



The Three Bears by F. Rojankovsky



Three Little Pigs (Little Golden Book) is based on the Disney animated version.



The Gingerbread Man (Big Little Golden Book) by Nancy Nolte (Author), Richard Scarry (Illustrator)



The Twelve Dancing Princesses (Little Golden Book) by Jane Werner



Cinderella (Little Golden Book) "The original Little Golden Book from the 1940s featuring Walt Disney’s Cinderella is back!" This is a Disney title but it is so retro in appearance that it is fun to look at.



Puss in Boots (Little Golden Book) by Kathryn Jackson



If you like Little Golden Books or know someone who does, this book, Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became An American Icon Along the Way (Deluxe Golden Book), may also make a great gift. It's on my wishlist for me!

Fairy Tale Wall Stickers

Home Stickers HOST 277 Little Red Riding Hood Decorative Wall Stickers
Okay, these have been on my share list for a few months and I want them off! I wish I had wall space for at least one set of these, but the nature of my office is that every reasonable inch of wall space is covered with books. That's a wonderful thing. But it means I don't get to put up much fairy tale art or fun in my office. These are fun. If I had a small child to decorate for, I would choose these although it would be tempting to have the artist hubby also paint a mural. 
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Home Stickers HOSE 079 Goldilock's House Decorative Water Resistant Chalkboard Stickers

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Home Stickers HOST 222 Three Little Pigs Decorative Wall Stickers

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Home Stickers HOST 188 Fairies Decorative Wall Stickers

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Home Stickers HOST 279 Princess Decorative Wall Stickers

Arabian Nights Discussion on BBC Radio

SurLaLune reader Kelsang K. shared this link this morning for a new BBC radio program discussion about Arabian Nights. Some of the big names in Arabian Nights recent publications are on the panel, including Robert Irwin and Marina Warner. Depending on your region's availability, you can listen to it here for free for a limited time: Arabian Nights.

Anne McElvoy's joined by Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building, to discuss writing in the contemporary Arabic world and the continuing influence of stories from 1000 years ago. Joining him are Rose Issa, a Lebanese/Iranian curator of Arabic art and film and two British experts on The Arabian Nights: Robert Irwin, who introduces a new, English translation of a medieval fantasy collection and Marina Warner, whose interests stretch from Scheherazade to a new collection of Scottish fantasies.

Here are some of the Arabian Nights books by the panelists:

New Fairy Tale Designs on CafePress

Fairy Godmother
I finally got the image editor to work on CafePress so I have loaded the new designs hubby John made for me earlier this year. These designs are available on many products and the images here are representative of some of the shirts.

Prince Charming with Crown

Talks to Wolves (also available in Red Lettering)

Talks to Wolves with Phone

The Snow Queen illustrated by Yevgeniya Yeretskaya

The Snow Queen: A Pop-Up Adaption of a Classic Fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen (Author), Yevgeniya Yeretskaya (Illustrator) is not a new book. It was released a year ago. But I finally acquired it for my personal library and I wanted to share it. Regular readers here know that I have a passion for pop up books, so when a pop up book is a fairy tale book, too, I am hooked. I honestly don't know why it took me a year to buy this one for myself.

I have two illustrations to share below. For the little girl in your life who loves Frozen, this is a great introduction to the original tale with some beautiful pop-up illustrations to enchant readers.


Book description:

This new holiday book features amazing paper engineering and pop-ups from the same paper engineer that developed the best-selling Snowflakes title. This unique pop-up interpretation of a beloved Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale is destined to be another classic to be enjoyed for years by the entire family.

Guest Post: Fairy Tales in a Flash: Sharing Stories that Matter--Online Class

Here is a guest post about a new online fairy tale course that is being offered for free to the first 100 SurLaLune readers who sign up.

Hello Fellow Fairy Tale Enthusiasts,

My name is Josh Withrow, and I am a teacher from Vancouver, BC. I've taught secondary English and humanities for the past 12 years, and in 2012 I received my Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities (English Stream). Like many of you, I love watching, reading, and retelling fairy tales. It amazes me that stories that have been around for hundreds of years continue to intrigue and memorize audiences from around the world. But, have you ever stopped to think why these stories continue to draw so much attention? Is it action, the characters, or the look into the world of the fantastic that pull readers into the pages of these stories? While I think all of these characteristics contribute to the lasting success of fairy tales, I ultimately believe that these stories appeal to something much deeper in the human spirit.

The focus in my Master's program was childhood literature--and I did extensive research on the effects that fantasy and fairy tales can have on shaping a child's views of virtue and morality. I write frequently about this topic on my blog, and I was recently asked to speak at Magdalen College in Oxford University on the topic. After coming back from Oxford, I realized that I wanted to create an online class on the topic for a broader audience. Four months later, I released my class Fairy Tales in a Flash: Sharing Stories that Matter, and I would like to appeal to this wonderful fairy tale community for your help.

I would like to offer 100 people FREE access to this class in order to help me make it the best it can be. And if you like it, I would greatly appreciate your honest opinion and a short review so other people will feel confident taking the course.

Ultimately, the class was designed to give people new eyes for fairy tales--eyes that can see the great potential for deeper discussion steaming from these great stories.

This class starts with a brief background to fairy tales and then goes on to give a more in depth look into eight popular tales. Each fairy tale has a short introductory video that helps illuminate the themes in the stories, and then there is a short lecture with notes. All in all, the course is a little over an hour. I even include the text and an audio reading for each story.

To get an idea of the class, you can click on the link below for a preview. If you like what you see....sign up for FREE (but hurry, there's only 100 coupons). If it asks for a code, use: surlalune

https://www.udemy.com/fairy-tales-in-a-flash/?couponCode=surlalune

Thanks,
Josh Withrow
thewiseimagination.com

Fairy Tales in Advertising: Latinstock: Little Red Riding Hood

Latinstock: Little Red Riding HoodImages that tell everything.
Now I just loved this one. I work with stock imagery all the time in my real world job and then again so with SurLaLune, so I appreciate the message here. I wish there were more of this one!

And, yes, I had to crop this one quite a bit to give us a better image size for the blog. I usually don't crop the ads, but this one felt necessary to get a better impact.

Campaign info from Ads of the World:

Advertising Agency: DDB, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Creative Directors: Sergio Valente, Marco Versolato, Gustavo Victorino, Moacyr Neto
Art Director: Mozar Gudin
Copywritter: Tomás Correa
Account Supervisors: Mônica de Carvalho, Andrei Croisfelt, Daniel Malavazzi, Adriana Barreto
Media: Mônica de Carvalho, Patrícia Muratori, Soraya Sobral
Art Buyer: Clariana Costa, Alessandra Salles
Graphic Producer: Clariana Costa, Anelito Nóbrega

Most Popular Fairy Tales on SurLaLune

Mary Catelli recently posted on the SurLaLune Discussion Board about the Top Twenty(ish) Tales which reminded me that I hadn't looked at the analytics for the SurLaLuneFairyTales.com site in a while. And considering Mary's question, I decided to pull the analytics for the last 7.5 years, since summer of 2007 when I changed the analytics engine on the site.

The list Mary shared to start the conversation is an excellent one and includes a few tales that are not annotated on the SurLaLune site, such as Aladdin and Ali Baba, because I have steered away from Arabian Nights tales there. However, all other tales on the site were chosen out of interest and popularity of fairy tales. Most of the tales are commonly collected in fairy tale collections of most types, from generic to collector's editions.

Oh, I also don't have Pied Piper because it is a difficult story to count as a fairy tale, but that's a discussion for another time. It is definitely folklore and I'll just leave it at that for now. I will say that Aladdin is more popular these days thanks to Disney and I rarely meet someone in the "real" world who knows Ali Baba beyond the name, rather like Bluebeard, who everyone thinks is a pirate like Blackbeard. Name recognition that Ali Baba is something fairy tale-ish but no real knowledge to back it up.

There are currently 49 annotated (or partially annotated) tales on the SurLaLune site. While analytics are an imperfect science due to the way pages are tracked, I decided to share the simple rankings and stats of traffic to the index page for each tale on the site. In other words, the page rankings provided below say where the page falls into traffic to the 5,602 pages tracked by analytics on SurLaLune. And those 5,602 pages have resulted in 13,022,950 page views since June 3, 2007 through yesterday.

Now I would not consider this the final say on fairy tale popularity. Tales like Bluebeard, Girl Without Hands/Armless Maiden, and Donkeyskin are inflated on SurLaLune since so many classrooms like to use those tales and send students there--the traffic source for these pages tends to be direct links from class pages, for example, more than organic searches and links from the SurLaLune home page. But Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are BY FAR the most popular pages on the site. Beauty and the Beast is the only one that comes somewhat close in traffic to challenging Cinderella's reign.

Also, Frog King is terribly low in relation to its popular culture recognition due to the name I chose when developing the site. If I had named it Frog Prince, it would receive a much higher ranking from organic searches.

Snow White and Rose Red is also problematic--it grabs Snow White searches on some search engines--but it has an amazingly high recognition and fandom with fairy tale fans. I'd knock it down to top 30 instead of top 20. Some of the Hans Christian Andersen tales are also challenging. And Snow Queen has definitely risen this past year thanks to Frozen even if they are barely related.

Either way, the list adds to Mary's discussion. And these rankings have stayed pretty firm over the years since I started the site in 1998. Although I was still adding tales for several years, no new tales have been added since 2007. Puss in Boots did get a jump from the Shrek movies. Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood have flirted with each other from year to year due to movie releases and such. Rapunzel is somewhat inflated thanks to Tangled, too, but it was in similar rankings before the movie, too, but usually below Sleeping Beauty instead of above it.

1. Cinderella, Page Rank: 2
2. Beauty and the Beast, Page Rank: 3
3. Little Red Riding Hood, Page Rank: 7
4. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Page Rank: 8
5. Hansel and Gretel, Page Rank: 9
6. Rapunzel, Page Rank: 10
7. Sleeping Beauty, Page Rank: 12
8. Little Mermaid, Page Rank: 13
9. Three Little Pigs, Page Rank: 15
10. Rumpelstiltskin, Page Rank: 16
11. Jack and the Beanstalk, Page Rank: 19
12. Puss in Boots, Page Rank: 23
13. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Page Rank: 26
14. Snow White and Rose Red, Page Rank: 27
15. Bluebeard, Page Rank: 28
16. Girl Without Hands/Armless Maiden, Page Rank: 31
17. East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Page Rank: 35
18. Ugly Duckling, Page Rank: 37
19. Twelve Dancing Princesses, Page Rank: 38
20. Princess and the Pea, Page Rank: 40
21. Snow Queen, Page Rank: 49
22. Six Swans, Page Rank: 68
23. Little Match Girl, Page Rank: 73
24. Swan Maiden, Page Rank: 75
25. Frog King, Page Rank: 76
26. Thumbelina, Page Rank: 78
27. Shoemaker and the Elves, Page Rank: 80
28. Donkeyskin, Page Rank: 95
29. Red Shoes, Page Rank: 96
30. Gingerbread Man, Page Rank: 98
31. Baba Yaga, Page Rank: 114
32. King Thrushbeard, Page Rank: 120
33. Nightingale, Page Rank: 130
34. Maid Maleen, Page Rank: 132
35. Hop o’ My Thumb, Page Rank: 145
36. Tinderbox, Page Rank: 176
37. Steadfast Tin Soldier, Page Rank: 202
38. Diamonds and Toads, Page Rank: 215
39. Firebird, Page Rank: 238
40. Emperor's New Clothes, Page Rank: 252
41. Brother and Sister, Page Rank: 286
42. Brave Little Tailor, Page Rank: 303
43. Three Billy Goats Gruff, Page Rank: 313
44. Fisherman and His Wife, Page Rank: 321
45. Bearskin, Page Rank: 343
46. Godfather Death, Page Rank: 351
47. Goose Girl, Page Rank: 360
48. Golden Goose, Page Rank: 432
49. Bremen Town Musicians, Page Rank: 469

Cinderella Puzzles

One of the nieces is both princess crazy and enjoying puzzles these days so I've gone looking for interesting puzzles to share with her. One of those most interesting finds has been 3D Puzzle Jigsaw 44 pcs Crystal High Heels Cinderella Shoe Slipper CLEAR for christmas gift. 3D puzzles are really more like Legos than traditional puzzles, requiring more engineering than anything else, but this one looks especially challenging since there are no colors to guide you. If you prefer, it is also available in pink at 3D Puzzle Jigsaw 44 pcs Crystal High Heels Cinderella Shoe Slipper PINK for christmas gift.


I've also found other puzzles featuring Cinderella that do not have a Disney stamp on them. Thought I would share:


MasterPieces Cinderella Book Box Jigsaw Puzzle, 1000-Piece

Djeco Cinderella Silhouette Puzzle (36 pc)

Cinderella Puzzle in a Gift Box, 100-Piece

Ravensburger Enchanting Princess 108 Piece Children's Puzzleball is deceptive in the pictures. It is actually a 3D puzzle in globe shape.

Ravensburger Cinderella's Transformation - 500 Piece Puzzle

Cinderella and Prince at Ball, 500 Piece By Castorland Puzzle

White Mountain Puzzles Cinderella Puzzlebook featuring art by Ruth Sanderson

Cinderella Glitter and Glow Puzzle

Crocodile Creek Fairytale Shaped Box Floor Puzzle - 36 Piece

Cinderella 260 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle By Castorland