Midori Snyder's Blog, page 78

Traveling North...Coming Back to Technicolor

I am heading out this week for a conference so not sure that I will be doing much posting, if any. However, after a week of black and white imagery, I decided I needed to leave everyone with a technicolor...

Lotte Reiniger: Silhouette Fairy Tale Films

I am totally gobsmacked by German artist Lotte Reiniger's gorgeous black papercuts that she used to make silhouette animated fantasy films as well as beautiful book illustrations (when money could not be found for the films). Her work spans some...

Crocodiles and Tricksters

It seems the post-art this week has been all black and white...so I am happy to add another fabulous work to the week's postings. This one is a new post from artist Emiliano Lake Herrera who has combined his love...

A Return to How They Drank In The 40s

Magpies like me rejoice at finding wonderful items on the internet, but I am also pleased in being found. I recently received a terrific email from a middle school English teacher whose sixth grade class was tackling poetry with some...

Can You Tell An Author's Sex From Their Writing?

Recently, the acclaimed (by others -- but most certainly by himself) V.S. Naipaul created a dust up by claiming that no female writer was his literary equal. He trashed Austen (in ways that suggested that he didn't actually understand her...

Darkness Too Visible: The Trends of Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

I found Meghan Cox Gurdon's article "Darkness Too Visible" a compelling critique of the current trends in young adult fiction: "How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear. So dark that kidnapping...

The Garden Spiral

It seems every time I put a garden in my novels it has a spiral path. I think I like the shape because it is evocative of so many different ideas -- the snail (which I feel I am sometimes...

Friday's Movie on Thursday: Spooning in a Spoon.

It seems I find all my funny movies on Thursday instead of Friday -- so let's just call it another movie of the week-day. I love this old cartoon with its fabulous "spooning in a spoon" song. "In a cup...

The Illusionist: A Return to Magic

I am so looking forward to seeing this lovely film, The Illusionist, (by animator Sylvain Chomet, the genius behind The Triplets of Belleville) inspired by an old script of Jacques Tati, my all time favorite comedic film maker when I...

Folklore and Three Generations of War

I have recently finished reading Tea Obreht's exquisite novel, The Tiger's Wife, set in what was once Yugoslavia over the course of WWI, WWII, and the recent wars that resulted in its dissection into new territories. War forms an continuous...