Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 96

Terry Pratchett Bargain Books

Witches Abroad (Discworld) by Terry Pratchett has dropped from $6.99 to $3.99 for the ebook format. Several Pratchett titles have dropped in price actually, but this is one of his that specifically deals with fairy tales and their themes. There's a fairy godmother, prince, etc. in this one. With the usual Pratchett humor which you will either adore or walk away from. I imagine these price drops are temporary as they usually are for well established authors. Usually these drops are because a new title is coming out and the publisher wants to capitalize on people wanting to rebuy a beloved book they own in paper for their e-readers or to try out another title they haven't yet with a sale price.

Book description:

Be careful what you wish for...

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother named Desiderata who had a good heart, a wise head, and poor planning skills—which unforunately left the Princess Emberella in the care of her other (not quite so good and wise) godmother when DEATH came for Desiderata. So now it's up to Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax, and Nanny Ogg to hop on broomsticks and make for far-distant Genua to ensure the servant girl doesn't marry the Prince.

But the road to Genua is bumpy, and along the way the trio of witches encounters the occasional vampire, werewolf, and falling house (well this is a fairy tale, after all). The trouble really begins once these reluctant foster-godmothers arrive in Genua and must outwit their power-hungry counterpart who'll stop at nothing to achieve a proper "happy ending"—even if it means destroying a kingdom.

Wyrd Sisters (Discworld) is another Pratchett title that has dropped to $3.99. It isn't fairy tale themed--although all of these are fantasy--but draws from several Shakespeare plays which I thought would entertain many here.

Book description:

Terry Pratchett’s fantasy classic Wyrd Sisters, a novel in the Discworld series, is the story of Granny Weatherwax, the most highly regarded non-leader a coven of non-social witches could ever have.

Generally, these loners don't get involved in anything, mush less royal intrigue. but then there are those times they can't help it. As Granny Weatherwax is about to discover, though, it's a lot harder to stir up trouble in the castle than some theatrical types would have you think. Even when you've got a few unexpected spells up your sleeve.

Granny Weatherwax teams with two other witches — Nanny Ogg and Margat Garlick - as an unlikely alliance to save a prince and restore him to the throne of Lancre, in a tale that borrows — or is it parodies — some of William Shakespeare's best-loved works.

While other Pratchett titles have dropped occasionally this is the first time these two titles have dropped this low--I've been watching them for years!

Marvelous Transformations Giveaway: Victoria T.'s List

(US / UK Links)
Today is the last day to enter! Post your entries by 11:59 PST 1/27/2014.

Victoria T. was the next to submit a list of fairy tale and folklore nonfiction titles that have most influenced her for her entries in the Marvelous Transformations Giveaway.

Here are her list of titles. Thanks for sharing Victoria T. You have five entries in the giveaway!

And thanks for explaining why the books are important to you, Victoria. I really enjoyed your comments.

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1. Jack Zipes' The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: When Zipes resembled how the tale's protagonist is defamed by victim blaming, I found it revolutionising.

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2. Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers: Reading this book made me want to specialise in fairy tale literature for my current PhD. Its emphasis on female folklorists has not been surpassed since.

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3. Boria Sax's Serpent & Swan: Animal Bride Folklore & Literature: For rediscovering that the figure of the beast is more man than animal after all.

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4. Martin Sutton's The Sin-Complex: a Critical Study of English Versions of the Grimm's Kinder Und Hausmaechen in the Nineteenth Century: for introducing me to so many amazing English translations of the Grimms' text. Without these translators, the English-speaking world would never know the power of the Grimms' amazing tales.

Heidi's note: The Sin-Complex was Sutton's thesis and is available for reading in PDF format on the University of Auckland's website. It is very much copyrighted and the published edition is long out of print (and quite expensive usually if you can find it). According to WorldCat, only 74 libraries in the world have a copy in their holdings, so getting a copy of it to study may be a challenge otherwise.

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5. Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Vintage): For making me laugh when he called Snow White's dwarves 'stunted penises' due to their skillful penetration into dark holes and caves!

Marvelous Transformations Giveaway: Beth G.'s List

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Only 2 days left to enter!

Beth G. was the next to submit a list of fairy tale and folklore nonfiction titles that have most influenced her for her entries in the Marvelous Transformations Giveaway.

Here are her list of titles. Thanks for sharing Beth G. You have five entries in the giveaway!

(US / UK Links)
1. The Teller's Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers by Sophie Raynard

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2. The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales edited by Jack Zipes

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3. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies by Cristina Bacchilega

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4. Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) by Vanessa Joosen

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5. Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiz

Marvelous Transformations Giveaway: youstillshine's List

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Only 3 days left to enter!

youstillshine was the next to submit a list of fairy tale and folklore nonfiction titles that have most influenced her for her entries in the Marvelous Transformations Giveaway.

Here are her list of titles. Thanks for sharing youstillshine. You have five entries in the giveaway!

(US / UK Links)
1. Catherine Orenstein's Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, And The Evolution Of A Fairy Tale

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2. Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

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3. Kate Bernheimer's Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales

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4. Maria Tatar's The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales (Expanded Second Edition)

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5. Nancy Canepa's Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France

New Book: The Rockabilly Goats Gruff by Jeff Crosby

The Rockabilly Goats Gruff by Jeff Crosby (Author, Illustrator) was released last week. This is a fun twist on the classic fairy tale. And it's not the only version by this name--see the bottom of this post for another non-related Rockabilly Goats Gruff.


Book description:

Three rockin' billy goats turn a grumpy troll into the biggest rockabilly fan at the honky-tonk, putting a fun twist on the classic fairytale.

The images were gathered from Crosby's website and blog.



Below is Crosby's original concept art. Follow the link to see some of the evolution in more images. Big difference from beginning to end result!

********

As promised, here's the other version of the tale by the same title, not related to this book. Rockabilly Goats Gruff by Tom Knight from the album The Classroom Boogie has a song by the same name as the new book. It's a kids' song, quite silly and fun, which you can sample on Amazon or other MP3 retailers.

Marvelous Transformations Giveaway: A Tarkabarka Hölgy's List

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Reminder: Only 4 more days to enter!

A Tarkabarka Hölgy was the next to submit a list of fairy tale and folklore nonfiction titles that have most influenced her for her entries in the Marvelous Transformations Giveaway.

Here are her list of titles. Thanks for sharing A Tarkabarka Hölgy. You have five entries in the giveaway!

(US / UK Links)
1. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde

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2. Apples From Heaven: Multicultural Folk Tales About Stories and Storytellers by Naomi Baltuck

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3. Oriental Stories as Tools in Psychotherapy: The Merchant and the Parrot by Nossrat Peseschkian

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4. The Storytellers' Journey: AN AMERICAN REVIVAL by Joseph Sobol

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5. Ready-To-Tell Tales: Sure-Fire Stories From America's Favorite Storytellers (Multicultural Resource: Stories & Tellers of Many Cultures) by David Holt & Bill Mooney

Jewelry Find: Fairy Tale Images on Natural Shell

Fairy Tale Images on Natural Shell Pendant are a different fairy tale themed jewelry than the usual silver charms I see. If you've seen one silver Cinderella carriage, you've seen 30 of them, yes? Same goes with frogs wearing crowns. (Or even frogs without crowns as Prince Charmings. See the Kate Spade Prince Charming Collection)
Anyway, this has been on my list to share since before Christmas. Finally another thing off my blog list....
I also like that these are not the "most" popular fairy tales necessarily. Red Riding Hood, Frog Prince, and Sleeping Beauty really don't get the same exposure believe it or not. We get lots of frogs with crowns, but that's about it. An image with the princess, a well, and a gold ball included. Wow! Someone read the fairy tale!



They are also available as earrings. These are from different sellers but average the same price with shipping. The last on the list offers all four designs and may combine shipping, I didn't check.


Genuine Shell Earrings - Sleeping Beauty Inspired Design

Genuine Shell Earrings - The Princess & the Frog Inspired Design

Shell Pearl Earrings - Little Red Riding Hood Inspired Design

Fairy Tale Images on Natural Shell Earrings - Mermaid

Out of the Woods by Nancy Canepa: Hardcover 60% Off

Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France by Nancy Canepa is bargain priced in the US for an unknown amount of time to 60% of the list price for the HARDCOVER.

This is not an ebook bargain like most I post. Currently the price is $17.98 in the US with a list price of $44.95. I noticed this because it appears on a giveaway list submission I'm posting later this week. And that price is much less than I paid for the book years ago.

Amazon says five copies are currently available at this price and this is an excellent title to add to your fairy tales library. The book is out of print and only available used from most other sellers.

Book description:

Out of the Woods studies the birth and early evolution of the literary fairy tale in Italy and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from the early Italian collections (Straparola and Basile), through the "first wave" of fairy tale production in the France of Louis XIV (Perrault and d'Aulnoy), up to later eighteenth-century manipulations and transformations (Hamilton, Gozzi, Casanova). The tales analyzed here were appropriated from the oral tradition and transformed by professional men and women of letters into sophisticated literary creations for an elite audience of court and salon frequenters. Thus, far from being minor works or "entertainment for little ones," these fantastic tales contributed to an interrogation and revision of the cultural history of their times, offering new paradigms of narrative representation and social interaction.

Table of Contents

Preface 7
Introduction 9

I The Rebirth of a Genre: The Creation of the Literary Fairy Tale in the Seventeenth Century

1 "Quanto 'nc'e da cca a lo luoco dove aggio da ire?": Giambattista Basile's Quest for the Literary Fairy Tale 37

2 Beauty and the Hag: Appearance and Reality in Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti 81

3 Perrault's Contes: An Irregular Pearl of Classical Literature 99

II From Genre to Gender and Ideology

4 Marvelous Realities: Reading the Merveilleux in the Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tale 131

5 Fairy Tales about Fairy Tales: Notes on Canon Formation 152

6 Of Cats and Men: Framing the Civilizing Discourse of the Fairy Tale 176

7 Reflections on the Monarchy in d'Aulnoy's Belle-Belle ou le chevalier Fortune 194

III Eighteenth-Century Parodies and Transformations of the Fairy Tale

8 Fractured Fairy Tales: Parodies for the Salon and Foire 221

9 The Reactionary Imagination: Ideology and the Form of the Fairy Tale in Gozzi's Il re cervo [The King Stag] 247

10 "Lecteur, ne vous allarmez pas" [Reader, be not afraid]: Giacomo Casanova and Reading the Fantastic 278

11 Little Red Riding Hood as Fairy Tale, Fait-divers, and Children's Literature: The Invention of a Traditional Heritage 306

Contributors
Index

Marvelous Transformations Giveaway: Spikeabell's List

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Reminder: There are only 5 days left to enter. I will announce the winner on or after January 28th.

Spikeabell was the next to submit a list of fairy tale and folklore nonfiction titles that have most influenced her for her entries in the Marvelous Transformations Giveaway.

Here are her list of titles. Thanks for sharing Spikeabell. You have five entries in the giveaway!

(US / UK Links)
1. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm (Norton Critical Editions) by Jack Zipes

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2. Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre by Jack Zipes

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3. Fairytale in the Ancient World by Graham Anderson

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4. Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm by Ruth Bottigheimer

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5. Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales by Max Lüthi

New Book: Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas

(US / UK Links)
Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas by Natasha Yim (Author), Grace Zong (Illustrator) was released earlier this month in the US, one of the first fairy tale books of 2014 actually. The Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas (UK Edition) will be released in February.

Book description:

In this Chinese American retelling of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," a careless Goldy Luck wreaks havoc on the home of a family of panda bears. She eats up the littlest panda’s rice porridge, breaks his rocking chair, and rumples all the blankets on his futon. When Goldy takes responsibility for her actions, she makes a new friend (and a whole plate of turnip cakes!) just in time for Chinese New Year.

I have several images from the book borrowed from a post by Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. (Jules is a fellow Tennessean--even lives in the same city as me. Waves!) Jules has more about the art and more images to see in her post. I really wanted more Panda images to preview since I have an affection for pandas--and now I need to see if there are other Goldilocks with pandas--seems there is another, but I can't think of it this morning. Or I may be wrong and this could be the first one published and I've only seen unpublished work.