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Tom McNeal’s just out Far Far Away is getting some well-deserved buzz so I figured I would post my brief goodreads comments, written after reading it a few months back.
A very unique read, sort of spooky, definitely creepy as it goes on. With one notable exception, the characters are-not-quite Grimm characters, but nearly. The book is filled with Grimm tropes and you think the author is going to take you in somewhat predictable fairy-tale directions and he doesn’t. McNeal really knows how to make food sound really scrumptious and also various characters twinkly and fun until…they are not. It probably would have given me nightmares as a kid. That is, I was the sort of kid who always freaked out around clowns and there is a character in this book that reinforces just why they freaked me out. Can’t say more without spoilage.
By: C. C. Gevry,
on 5/23/2013
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Lovers of fractured fairy tales are bound to eat up this one. Mr. and Mrs. Wolf are angry that Little Wolf isn’t big and bad like they are. They send her out to gather ingredients for dinner and she stumbles upon Red Riding Hood in the forest. Little Wolf doesn’t know what to do. Perhaps the unlikely duo can find a solution to Little Wolf’s problem.
This is a fabulous book! It’s a neat twist having the wolf parents being the bad ones, while Little Wolf has no desire to eat little girls. Instead, she likes fairy tales and playing dress up. It’s also funny and unique how Red Riding Hood is reading some familiar fairy tales as she makes her way to grandma’s house. You simply can’t help but love this story. It’s so clever.
I knew Liz Pichon provided the artwork for this story without even looking. In addition to being the author of her own fractured fairy tale, her distinctive style adds beauty and humor to Red Riding Hood and the Sweet Little Wolf.
Children will love this one. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Tiger Tales (March 1, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1589251172
ISBN-13: 978-1589251175
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. This review contains my honest opinions, for which I have not been compensated in any way.
Last August I blogged about writing markets for child authors. After I’d compiled a list on my blog, the editor of the e-zine Knowonder! contacted me to let me know it also publishes children’s writing (as well as children’s stories written by adults). I was unfamiliar with the e-zine but saw it paid, so I submitted a few stories online. Knowonder! recently purchased a Christmas story from me.
The editor has since let me know that Knowonder! is now accepting chapter books for ages 7 to 9. If you’re interested, you can find guidelines and submit at knowonder.submittable.com/submit
From what I’ve submitted to this publisher, I gather the editors are seeking stories more like traditional fairy tales, with an element of magic or fantasy. They ask for “imaginative, exciting, action-filled” stories. They don’t appear to be seeking run-of-the-mill contemporary stories with everyday situations set in ordinary settings.
By Mary Pleiss
When I was a little girl, the witches I knew came from fairy tales. They were old, ugly, and mean–life ruiners who cast evil spells with no provocation. My young friends and I ran into the problem of the witch in our play. We didn’t want to meet a witch in a dark forest or a bright one, even if that forest was the pair of trees in our backyard. Certainly none of us wanted to be the witch. But we knew we had to have a witch. Witches made things happen, provided scary, shivery tension, and gave the good characters something to fight against and overcome.
We often solved this problem by keeping the witch offscreen; we called out plot points detailing the unseen, unheard witch’s actions: “Now the witch is casting her spell. If you get to the swing set, you’re safe!” or, “You stepped into the witch’s clover patch–you’re trapped!” We could imagine the witch without casting her because we’d read stories and seen movies (mostly Disney movies and of course The Wizard of Oz). We knew witches well enough to weave them into our play without having to face the fact that we all had it in ourselves to be witches.
In sixth grade, I read Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and I started thinking about witches in a different way. What made the people of Wethersfield believe Hannah Tupper and Kit Tyler were witches, when any reader could see they weren’t magical or evil–just a little bit different? Why did their neighbors feel the need to banish or imprison them? If Hannah and Kit weren’t really evil, what did that say about the fairy tale witches I’d always feared and hated?
The witches in our fiction today are very different from those in fairy tales, and it turns out that even the Wicked Witch of the West has more complexity than I realized when I was growing up. I knew her from the movie, but reading the books as an adult, and learning more about the history of the Oz books in particular and witches–and those who were accused of witchcraft–in western culture has witches in a new light. L. Frank Baum was heavily influenced by his mother-in-law, Matilda Gage, who was an historian and feminist who promoted influential theories about women who were called witches in history. Baum had those theories in mind when he populated Oz with witches who were more dimensional than what had come before; they had backstories and motivations, and while some of them were evil, just as many were good.
Since Baum, of course, a number of children’s and YA writers have included witches–and women accused of witchcraft–in their stories. Whether bad, good, or somewhere in between, those witches have developed into characters with more depth and complexity than even Baum could have imagined. As societal attitudes about the roles of girls and women have evolved, fictional characterizations of witches have changed, and we can’t get away with taking the problematic witch offscreen or making her a one-dimensional villain. Now, when we write about witches, we work to make them as dimensional as all of our other characters, and our problem becomes the same as that we face with most other characters: how do we bring the witch to life?
Here are some suggestions and questions you can ask yourself if you’re including witchy characters in your fiction:
Consider doing some research into historical witches and witchcraft trials. You might find an angle or a detail no one’s ever written about before.
If your witches really do practice magic, is their power individual or communal, or some combination of both? Is magic learned or innate? Can you make witchcraft/magic a source of conflict, rather than a crutch that relieves it?
Does your character need to make choices about her “witchiness”—whether it’s to become a witch, to fully use or curtail her own power, or to educate herself about her power? Against or for whom she will use her power? Will she embrace her power right away, or resist it?
These are, of course, just a start to creating fully realized witch characters, but they’re a way to turn the witch into an integral part of your story, rather than a flat stereotype. Give your readers more to think about when you write witches, so that kids who play pretend will argue over who gets to be the witch, rather than relegating her to an offscreen ghost.
Mary Pleiss: Though some might say all the hours Mary Pleiss spent haunting the library and disappearing into book worlds hinted at her future in writing for middle grade and young adult readers, she confesses that at the time she just thought it was a good way to escape her noisy family (she loves them, really, but six siblings can be a bit much at times). She is a curriculum development specialist, teacher, and recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
Follow Mary on Twitter: @MKPleiss
This blog post was brought to you as part of the March Dystropian Madness blog series.
By Mary Pleiss
When I was a little girl, the witches I knew came from fairy tales. They were old, ugly, and mean–life ruiners who cast evil spells with no provocation. My young friends and I ran into the problem of the witch in our play. We didn’t want to meet a witch in a dark forest or a bright one, even if that forest was the pair of trees in our backyard. Certainly none of us wanted to be the witch. But we knew we had to have a witch. Witches made things happen, provided scary, shivery tension, and gave the good characters something to fight against and overcome.
We often solved this problem by keeping the witch offscreen; we called out plot points detailing the unseen, unheard witch’s actions: “Now the witch is casting her spell. If you get to the swing set, you’re safe!” or, “You stepped into the witch’s clover patch–you’re trapped!” We could imagine the witch without casting her because we’d read stories and seen movies (mostly Disney movies and of course The Wizard of Oz). We knew witches well enough to weave them into our play without having to face the fact that we all had it in ourselves to be witches.
In sixth grade, I read Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and I started thinking about witches in a different way. What made the people of Wethersfield believe Hannah Tupper and Kit Tyler were witches, when any reader could see they weren’t magical or evil–just a little bit different? Why did their neighbors feel the need to banish or imprison them? If Hannah and Kit weren’t really evil, what did that say about the fairy tale witches I’d always feared and hated?
The witches in our fiction today are very different from those in fairy tales, and it turns out that even the Wicked Witch of the West has more complexity than I realized when I was growing up. I knew her from the movie, but reading the books as an adult, and learning more about the history of the Oz books in particular and witches–and those who were accused of witchcraft–in western culture has witches in a new light. L. Frank Baum was heavily influenced by his mother-in-law, Matilda Gage, who was an historian and feminist who promoted influential theories about women who were called witches in history. Baum had those theories in mind when he populated Oz with witches who were more dimensional than what had come before; they had backstories and motivations, and while some of them were evil, just as many were good.
Since Baum, of course, a number of children’s and YA writers have included witches–and women accused of witchcraft–in their stories. Whether bad, good, or somewhere in between, those witches have developed into characters with more depth and complexity than even Baum could have imagined. As societal attitudes about the roles of girls and women have evolved, fictional characterizations of witches have changed, and we can’t get away with taking the problematic witch offscreen or making her a one-dimensional villain. Now, when we write about witches, we work to make them as dimensional as all of our other characters, and our problem becomes the same as that we face with most other characters: how do we bring the witch to life?
Here are some suggestions and questions you can ask yourself if you’re including witchy characters in your fiction:
Consider doing some research into historical witches and witchcraft trials. You might find an angle or a detail no one’s ever written about before.
If your witches really do practice magic, is their power individual or communal, or some combination of both? Is magic learned or innate? Can you make witchcraft/magic a source of conflict, rather than a crutch that relieves it?
Does your character need to make choices about her “witchiness”—whether it’s to become a witch, to fully use or curtail her own power, or to educate herself about her power? Against or for whom she will use her power? Will she embrace her power right away, or resist it?
These are, of course, just a start to creating fully realized witch characters, but they’re a way to turn the witch into an integral part of your story, rather than a flat stereotype. Give your readers more to think about when you write witches, so that kids who play pretend will argue over who gets to be the witch, rather than relegating her to an offscreen ghost.
Mary Pleiss: Though some might say all the hours Mary Pleiss spent haunting the library and disappearing into book worlds hinted at her future in writing for middle grade and young adult readers, she confesses that at the time she just thought it was a good way to escape her noisy family (she loves them, really, but six siblings can be a bit much at times). She is a curriculum development specialist, teacher, and recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
Follow Mary on Twitter: @MKPleiss
This blog post was brought to you as part of the March Dystropian Madness blog series.
By: David D Bernstein,
on 4/7/2013
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Middle Grade Books
1)
“Children of the Lamp (The Akhanaten Adventure)- by P.B Kerr, published by “Orchard books, and imprint of scholastic Inc.
New York 2004.
What if you find out that you are descendants from a long line of Dijon, human-like beings created from fire.
They are able to grant wishes, and take on different animal forms.
This is exactly what happens to two twelve-year-old twins, John and Phillippa, after they get their wisdom teeth pulled.
The children are sent to London to their Uncle Nimrod's home where their amazing adventure begins. This venture takes the reader on a magic carpet ride through a fantasy Middle Eastern World.
This journey teaches the twins that granting wishes is not only dangerous for themselves, but for people who desire wishes as well.
2)
“Peter and Star Catchers”-Written
by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, illustrated by Greg Call.
Published by Disney Hyperion paperbacks for children New York 2004.
How was never-land discovered?
How did Peter Pan become a boy forever?
This book helps the reader find answers to those questions and many more.
Peter Pan is a never aging boy, who visits children at night and takes them to fantasy island called Never-Land where magic lives.
Through the use of vivid language and pencil illustrations, the authors introduce us to how Peter Pan became a part of a world, full of amazing creatures, and magic. This story reveals the mystery of magic dust and how Children can make it real by looking within and tapping into their own imagination.
3)
“Infinity Ring book three the trapdoor”- written by Lisa McMann, published by Scholastic Inc.
New York 2013.
The next book in this interactive serious takes our heroes Dak, Sera and Riq to Maryland in 1850 just before the Civil War.
The main character in this book travel back it time and fix History Breaks, that has been caused by an evil corporation with intentions to take over the world.
The time period in this book describes how new law has been passed that allows any white American to report free blacks, and then make them slaves. The children's mission is to stop this law, and to save the civil right leaders from a prison Dream like landscapes, humor and adventure take the seriousness of the topic at hand, and twists it into a fun read for everyone.
4)
“The 13thReality, the Journal of curious letters. - Written by James Dashner, illustrated by Bryan Beus, Published by Shadow Mountain Press an imprint of Worzalla Publishing Co.
Stevens point, WI. 2008. One day a nerdy boy, Atticus Higginbottom receives a strange letter from Alaska.
After this boy’s life changes from a boring one to life full of mystery and questions that, need to be answered.
Twelve clues help him understand that the world he lives in is just one of many parallel worlds, which still need to be discovered and saved.
If a child likes to solve problems through clues, they would love this book.
A story progresses Atticus goes from zero to hero.
The pencil illustrations and secrets surrounding the boy’s life will keep your middle graders turning the pages.
I have always loved the idea of magic, ever since I was read my first fairy tales. It didn't matter whether they were twinkly ones with fairy godmothers and wonderful pink ball-gown confections, Ladybird books with powdered Regency princes, or the dark, tangled, thrilling tales in Andrew Lang's collections, illustrated, preferably, by Arthur Rackham. All of them had magic, and so all of them had something that fed my strong desire for the unknown, the extraordinary.
As I got older, I graduated to C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones - wonderful, glorious books that made it seem entirely plausible that there was magic in the real world, or at least held out the chance of slipping into other worlds where magic existed. As an adult, I veered away from fantasy (mainly because most adult fantasy conforms too closely to the model lampooned so hilariously by Diana Wynne Jones in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland) but I never really lost the sense that magic was out there, just out of reach, visible in the corner of your eye.
So, when I started write my own books for children, I knew they'd have magic in them. The question was, what kind? What would be the logic of the magic I wrote? Fairy-tale magic is mostly based on cauldrons, spells, witches and waving wands, although there are some strange and wonderful ways that magic works, too - feather cloaks that turn their wearers into swans; geese that lay golden eggs; combs that, thrown behind you, turn into mountain ranges. My first and best guide to magic in older fiction, though, was Diana Wynne Jones.
In Jones's Chrestomanci series, there are witches, warlocks and potions, ingredients like newt's eyes, snake's tongues and dragon's blood, and spells that are made by grinding, heating and muttering, as in all the best fairy tales. But she also has more powerful and exciting magic, magic that happens when someone with the right sort of power simply tells the world to be different - and it is. This is the magic that belongs specifically to enchanters, and when you realise that someone in a Diana Wynne Jones book has it (and you nearly always find at least one) you know you are in for some seriously delightful mayhem.
There's another, very different, magical logic at work in Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus books. Here, magicians lord it over the non-magical commoners, but their dark secret is that none of their magic is really done by themselves. Wizards' only power is the ability to raise afrits, imps, djinni and demons from the 'other place', and all their apparently wonderful spells are carried out by the sweat and toil of these enslaved and invisible beings. It allows Stroud to have a lot of fun with the quarrelsome, vain and power-hungry magicians of his alternative London, while also giving us possibly the best fictional depiction of a djinni ever - Bartimaeus himself.
Perhaps the most technically minded inventor of magic for children is J.K. Rowling. I thoroughly enjoyed the Harry Potter books (despite being slightly bemused at how much attention they received) but I find magic in her books to be very 'National Curriculum': once spotted at 11, you just have to learn how to do it the right way, and pass exams, and then you are a proper witch or wizard. Despite the constant reiteration that some wizards are more powerful than others, we never really see much evidence of this. Hermione Granger is said to be 'the best witch of her generation', but we get no sense of any raw power that is simply part of her very being - instead, we get the impression that she's just very precise and has a good memory. The witch as swot, rather than enchanter.
So when I wrote 'Frogspell', which is set in the mythical time of King Arthur, I decided to go with the cauldrons, spells and potions of fairy-tale and legend, but I also wanted a sense that magic was something not just anyone could do - there had to be a special part of you, a power you had that others didn't. As the stories progress, my novice wizard, Max Pendragon, discovers more and more about the logic of magic, learns to tell one person's magic apart from another's, and finally realises that he doesn't need potions or spells, he can (like his hero, Merlin) do spells with his mind. Max, in fact, is an enchanter, of sorts - and it's a power that is crucial, in the end, to his defeat of the icy sorceress, Morgana le Fay.
In the process of writing the whole series, I found myself discovering and exploring more and more about how magic in this world worked, and I realised something else that gave me a huge thrill. Writing is a little like doing magic. Finally, I am a kind of enchanter!
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
When I reviewed Cinder, my main comment was:
My big complaint is that I figured out all the twists about 1/3 of the way through. However, I liked the world enough that I kept reading. Only to find that nothing really resolves, the stage just gets set for the next big adventure.
Some of that "no resolving" is still true. I think this series will end up more like being one long book instead of four separate ones. The world-building and politics involved just keep getting MORE awesome and I did not figure out everything going on with this one.
You guys, it's sooooooooooooooooooooo cooooooooooooooool. We have a few storylines going on here--
1. Scarlet's grandmother has disappeared and the police have closed the case, refusing to see the foul play that Scarlet does, so it's up to Scarlet to find her. She gets help from a street fighter called Wolf.
2. Cinder has escaped from jail with an annoying American who happens to own a spaceship, which is helpful. Of course, the spaceship is stolen, which is why he was in jail in the first place.
3. Queen Levana is not happy about Cinder's escape and gives Emperor Kai three days to find her and hand her over. Kai doesn't understand what the queen wants with her, and grapples with his own feelings at betrayal at Cinder being a Lunar. But he must do what he can to stop a Earth/Luna war, which Earth would surely lose.
I love that Cinder put Iko's personality chip in the spaceship. I love Iko's take at suddenly being a ship. (Also, the ship is called the Rampion, and the next book is
Cress which both make me think Rapunzel, but Rapunzel with a spaceship? Very, very intriguing.)
Scarlet lives in France, so we get to see more of Meyer's futuristic world, and get a broader sense of the international politics at play, as well as more the Luna threat.
Cinder is learning to use her Lunar mind-control and glamor gifts, but they always make her feel squeamy and guilty. Until she uses them, which just feels
right. This is an interesting issue and I'm curious to see where it goes.
This one also has a lot more action-- more fights, more jumping from trains, more crazy spaceship rides, just a lot more action and movement than
Cinder does.
While the immediate story gets (some) resolution, it really just opened up many more questions. This world is so intriguing and Meyer's take on fairy tales is so fresh, I really can't wait for the next one.
Book Provided by... my local library
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Welcome, all, to Poetry Friday! It's March 8, a date which has been International Women's Day since 1911. If you've never explored the history, get it
here.
I had hoped to go broadly international for you today with a few poems from women around the world, but then something less exotic yet somehow more universal caught my eye. It's in the title; it's in the way we comb our hair and dreams sift out; it's in the way nothing is very serious and yet we all worry about forgetting the way home.
Bon Courage |
Amy GerstlerWhy are the woods so alluring? A forest appears
to a young girl one morning as she combs
the dreams out of her hair. The trees rustle
and whisper, shimmer and hiss. The forest
opens and closes, a door loose on its hinges,
banging in a strong wind. Everything in the dim
kitchen: the basin, the jug, the skillet, the churn,
snickers scornfully. In this way a maiden
is driven toward the dangers of a forest,
but the forest is our subject, not this young girl.
She’s glad to lie down with trees towering all around.
A certain euphoria sets in. She feels molecular,
bedeviled, senses someone gently pulling her hair,
tingles with kisses she won’t receive for years.
Three felled trees, a sort of chorus, narrate
her thoughts, or rather channel theirs through her,
or rather subject her to their peculiar verbal
restlessness ... our deepening need for non-being intones
the largest and most decayed tree, mid-sentence.
I’m not one of you squeaks the shattered sapling,
blackened by lightning. Their words become metallic
spangles shivering the air. Will I forget the way home?
************
Find the rest here, and meet me in the woods at dusk.
In case it's possible that anyone has missed the March 1 launch of the new Poetry Friday Anthology, Middle School edition, please visit the blog to learn more. I'm delighted to be included in yet another stellar collection of work for children and teachers to enjoy together. I'll be rounding up in three waves today and look forward to seeing what everybody's been up to while I was "resting." Leave your links in the comments (since me and Mr. Linky have yet to get it on), and thanks for stopping by.
The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde
A few years ago, the blogosphere was excited about, and in love with, Vande Velde's Cloaked in Red, a book thta poked all the holes in the story of Little Red Riding Hood and then filled them in and new and interesting ways. It's a fantastic book.
Imagine my surprise and delight when I was in the stacks and discovered that Cloaked in Red was not the first time she had done this! The Rumpelstiltskin Problem came out in 2001 and takes a good, hard look at the many, many holes in this story.
1. Why the #%$! would the miller tell the king his daughter could spin straw into gold?
2. Why did the king believe him? If she really could, wouldn't the miller and his daughter be super rich?
3. If Rumplestiltskin could spin straw into gold, why would he accept a simple gold ring as payment for creating a lot more gold than that?
4. Why would the miller's daughter agree to marry a guy who kept threatening to behead her?
5. If someone is guessing your name, why are you dancing around a campfire singing it loudly?
Vande Velde has many possible explanations-- a troll who just wants to eat a baby. A father and king who've had a little too much to drink. An ugly, bitter woman who is lonelier than anything. A queen who just wants the king to notice their daughter...
Short, fun, and thought-provoking, you'll never look at the story of Rumplestiltskin again.
I do, however, wish they had kept the paperback cover. It's a little young, but must more appealing.
Book Provided by... my local library
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By:
Keith Schoch ,
on 2/9/2013
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When we read a truly wonderful picture book, one whose words resonate as much as the pictures themselves, we should take the opportunity to stand back and ask ourselves, "How did the author do that?" And more importantly, How can we get our students to find their own strong voices in writing?
If we recall the opening lines of some favorite middle-grade novels, we discover that the author's voice begins to take form in just the first few words. Consider Avi's Newbery winning The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a fantastic sea yarn in which the protagonist finds herself at the center of a mutiny:
“Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty. But I was such a girl, and my story is worth relating even if it did happen years ago.”
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
“Out to the hoghouse,” replied her mother. “Some pigs were born last night.”
As both novels progress, we immerse ourselves in the narrator's point of view, falling in step with the rhythm of words, the tone, and the exacting word choice.
But neither picture books nor our students' own writing has the luxury of 200+ pages to build voice. It needs to happen much sooner.Here are three picture book exemplars to get us started.
Mentor Text: Jangles: A BIG Fish Story
David Shannon's recent picture book Jangles: A BIG Fish Story harkens back to the day of the traditional Tall Tale. Tall Tales, characterized mainly by their penchant for hyperbole (that is, their tendency to exaggerate to the point of lying!) developed a boastful and boisterous voice over time, due to the fact that many of the original Tall Tales were spread orally. Each subsequent teller would add his or her own embellishments (as well as quaint colloquialisms), resulting in crowd-sourced versions of the tales that were rich in both authentic voice and vocabulary.
Jangles: A BIG Fish Story would serve as an excellent introduction to this literary genre. Author and illustrator David Shannon writes in a style that harkens to the boasts of the Tall Tale tradition:
When I was a kid, Jangles was the biggest fish that anyone had ever seen - or heard! That's right, you could hear Jangles. He'd broken so many fishing lines that his huge, crooked jaw was covered with shiny metal lures and rusty old fishhooks of all shapes and sized. They clinked and clattered as he swam. That's why he was called Jangles.
Jangles was so big, he ate eagles from the trees that hung over the lake, and full-grown beavers that strayed too far from home.
Compare that with the beginning of Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee (another Newbery Medal book): “They say (he) was born in a dump. They say his stomach was a cereal box and his heart was a sofa spring. They say he kept an eight-inch cockroach on a leash and that rats stood guard over him while he slept…They say.”
And to be sure, you'll find the "They say..." phrase in Shannon's book as well, since, while the facts of any Tall Tale might not be verified empirically, they must undoubtedly be true, since so many people agree on them.
The story itself is an engaging narrative, with an ending that requires a bit of inferring on the reader's part. The story also begs the question, "What would you have done in his place?" Close rereadings can reveal simile, alliteration, personification, and many other wonderful literary devices masterfully woven into the tale.
And the illustrations! Fans of David Shannon know from earlier books such as A Bad Case of the Stripes and How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball that his pictures are lush and vivid and sculpturesque. Whenever I'm explaining to my students that their own illustrations should be saturated with color, Shannon's books are among the exemplars I share.
Extensions:
- To begin a Tall Tale unit, let children read a number of traditional retellings of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, and Slue-Foot Sue. Have them generate the critical attributes of this genre, explaining as well how it differs from (and yet takes cues from) legends, folktales, and myths. Find some online resources at 42explore.
- After reading Jangles: A BIG Fish Story, challenge students to write a Tall Tale about an animal of their choosing. You might consider supplying a simple story map based upon the mentor text which can guide students in their writing.
- Ask students to generate a list of some of their most memorable experiences (circus, baseball game, birth of a sibling, family reunion, recital, getting lost at the mall, etc.). Share the interview with the David Shannon at the Scholastic site. Discuss how personal experiences can often serve as the basis for writing fiction, and then have students choose one of their events to turn into a fictional account.
Mentor Text: Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman, Olympic High Jumper
Another recent picture book which features a strong voice is Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman, Olympic High Jumper. Author Ann Malaspina tells the true-life tale of a young girl who dreams of being the first African-American woman to win gold at the Olympics. Her medals won while competing as part of Tuskegee Institute's famous Golden Tigerettes only increase her determination to reach that goal. Tall Tale boasting would be inappropriate for this genre, of course, because as Dizzy Dean (and others) would say, "It ain't bragging if you can do it." Instead, the prose here is more lyrical, and almost poetic:
Alice Coachman raced
down the dirt road,
bare feet flying,
long legs spinning,
braids flapping
in the wind...
LEAP!
She sailed over
a tree branch
and kept on running.
Students will come to appreciate the power of repetition, parallel structure, and flow in such lines as:
Fields shut.
Tracks shut.
Doors shut
to girls like Alice.
No place to practice.
No crossbar to raise.
Alice and her friends got busy.
Knotting rags.
Tying rags to sticks.
Planting sticks
in the red Georgia clay.
Then her friends stood back
and let Alice jump.
Illustrations by Eric Velasquez (trust me, you know this guy; we all have chapter books in our classrooms bearing his work) fill each page, providing not only energy and emotion, but historical context as well.
Extensions:
- Check out the Teacher's Guide at Albert Whitman and Company for discussion questions, cross-curricular extensions, and ready-to-use assessments.
- In connection with biography readings for either Back History Month or Women's History Month, encourage students to rewrite key events from a famous person's life using the lyrical style of (fellow New Jerseyan) Ann Malaspina. Existing lines from chapter books can be reformatted into parallel structures (where possible), although I'd prefer for students to adapt those events or anecdotes they find most compelling.
- If you enjoy Malaspina's writing, which Kirkus Reviews called "spare and elegant free verse," then definitely check out Heart on Fire: Susan B. Anthony Votes for President, another spot-on writing exemplar for young authors, with superb illustrations by Steve James. Susan B. Anthony's law-defying act of voting is little known to students, but rivals the illegal actions of such "criminals" as Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. See the classroom guide for this book which was named to the Top Ten of the Amelia Bloomer Project.
Mentor Text: Prairie Chicken LittleIn the tradition of this age old tale, Prairie Chicken Little by Jackie Mims Hopkins chronicles the over-reaction of one prairie chicken who thinks the sky is falling, or more accurately, a stampede is coming!Listen to this text's unique voice as the story begins:
Out on the grasslands where bison roam, Mary McBlicken the prairie chicken was scritch-scratching for her breakfast, when all of a sudden she heard a rumbling and a grumbling and a tumbling.
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "A stampede's a comin'! I need to hightail it back to the ranch to tell Cowboy Stan and Red Dog Dan. They'll know what to do."
So away Mary ran, lickety-splickety, as fast as her little prairie chicken legs could carry her.
The onomatopoeia, the rhymes, and the word choice (such as "hightail it") combine to create a voice that matches both the book's setting and its levity. The book's fun is well supported by Henry Cole's splendid pictures. You might recall seeing his handiwork in Three Hens and a Peacock, mentioned here in a previous post.
Extensions:
- In the event that your students are studying other ecosystems such as as rain forests or polar regions, you could adapt this idea, challenging students to create a crisis or calamity, as well as appropriate creatures who would help spread the word. It's a pretty cool way to synthesize students' collection of random facts from a unit into a creative response. Can't you just see a penguin or a toucan as the main character?
- Fractured Fairy Tales are an all time favorite for kids to read, and they're fun to write as well. A recent post at the Peachtree Publishing blog provides some great titles to get you started.
- Have students research any of the animals from Prairie Chicken Little. Some of the real-life critters who populate this book sport some pretty amazing features. A good place to start? The Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society.
Do you have a favorite picture book to teach author's voice? If so, share it below!
And if you haven't entered yet, be sure to get in on the raffle for one of three animal picture books happening on this blog (scroll to the bottom of that page).
By:
dianalevinart,
on 2/8/2013
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For the past couple of years selling fairy tale art at various conventions and art shows, I have heard many people ask about Wizard of Oz. After seeing how well my Alice in Wonderland Characters have been received, I have decided to create a new character series for Oz. As always I like to add my own twist on popular stories. For my first painting of the series, I have the Wicked Witch of the West in Steampunk style. Because I love Steampunk and fairy tales, the idea of combining the two was irresistible to me.
I have hand-painted all of the textured layers you see in this digital painting.
The post The Wicked Witch of the West: The beginning of Wizard of Oz Art Series appeared first on Diana Levin Art.
By: Kirsty,
on 12/20/2012
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By Joyce Crick
This year, Thursday December 20th is the 200th anniversary of the publication of their Tales for Children and the Household, currently being celebrated world-wide. Just in time for Christmas.
But even after 200 years, English-speaking countries still seem to know little more about the brothers and their stories than as a brand name for films from Disney or Terry Gilliam. How many could we name off the cuff? A dozen? Twenty?
It isn’t as if they really went away. In its two centuries of existence, their collection of stories has been selected, reprinted, translated (into 160 languages!), bowdlerized, modernized, deconstructed, illustrated, adapted for film and theatre, rewritten and remade again and again, from the brothers’ seemingly artless transcripts of stories told them by family friends or the tailor’s widow who came selling her garden produce, all the way to Shrek.
For one thing, the collection is more various and far bigger than the core of ‘magic’ stories we label Grimms’ Fairy Tales, following the style set by their earliest translators (it started at eighty-six in the two volumes of 1812 and 1815, but grew to two hundred and ten by the seventh edition of 1857!) The presence of fables, tall tales, moralities, earthy — but not too earthy — comic anecdotes, and many literary borrowings changes the constellation we are familiar with. But it explains the brothers’ own title better.
For another, they are not strictly ‘fairy’ tales — at least, not in brother Wilhelm’s editions that followed the little book we are celebrating. There certainly were fairies at first, mainly Feen, having their origins in Perrault’s fées who did not dwell in the German countryside, but at the French court; but by the second edition of 1819 Wilhelm had banished them and any other words, like Prinzessin of such French pedigree. (He turned her into a ‘king’s daughter’.) He removed stories too: ‘Puss-in-Boots’, ‘Bluebeard’ from French sources, ‘The Hand with the Knife’ from Scottish. Why? They weren’t German enough. There is not a fairy left, not in the title and no longer in the stories themselves, though there is still enchantment of course, and plenty of wisewomen, godmothers, witches, and even a few warlocks. This points to another gap in our assumptions about the Grimms: their little book has an improbable but significant place in the much larger literary story of Romantic nationalism.
Jacob (foreground, right) and Wilhelm Grimm
They intended these tales, Jacob especially, to be part of a wider project of rescuing old cultural phenomena in danger of being lost to the modern world, and rediscovering a simple German folk tradition in face of both the sophisticated French cultural influence long prevailing at court, and of immediate invasion and occupation by Napoleon’s armies. Their search was also driven by an ideal of the creative powers of the folk to generate these tales spontaneously, anonymously;
natural poesy is what Jacob called it, as opposed to
art poetry. So they also gathered local legends and customs, folk sayings and songs, traditional law and lore, motivated by both the new German patriotism and this romantic view of the people, views they shared with two friends and fellow-harvesters, the poets Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, editors of the German folk-song collection
Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The brothers were making new myths as much as recording old ones.
Their collection had a double purpose, ultimately contradictory. For it was also on the cusp between mere antiquarianism and the new sciences of anthropology and historical philology. This is where brother Jacob’s interests mainly lay. “To my mind the book was not written for children at all,” he wrote to Arnim. Wilhelm, though, became increasingly interested in the imaginative and educational possibilities of the collection as “a book for bringing up children.”
So even the handful of tales we do know, of lost children (more of them than just Hänsel and Gretel), strange transformations, talking animals, kings and princesses, tests and contests, rewards and fearsome punishments, journeys and homecomings, encounters in the threatening forest with wicked witches and helpful elves, were also at the beginning of a long afterlife not only in children’s imaginations but in scholarship as well. The collection turned out to hold far more possibilities than a simple publication of the tales the young men read in ancient tomes, or heard from their friends in the Hassenpflugs or the Wild girls next door or the tailor’s widow come selling her garden produce, or the curate in a neighbouring village, but rarely, it seems, direct from the mouth of the folk.
Jacob gradually left it to Wilhelm to edit the Tales to their seventh, final edition (1856-57), successively ‘enlarged and improved’ away from that first Christmas volume they had sent as a present to Arnim’s wife Bettina and their little son. Wilhelm’s ‘improvements’ between the edition we are celebrating and the last were considerable: he removed any sign of a foreign source; he added dialogue to plain narrative; combined tales; with artless art he cultivated the tales’ characteristic naive tone, turning — another contradiction — natural poesy into art poetry; his typical readership was the good bourgeois family, so he moralized, bowdlerized — though not nearly as much as his first English translators did. In other words, he made them Grimm.
So leave your laptop and join the celebrations: on December 20th choose an unfamiliar tale and read it aloud, preferably in the children’s corner of your endangered local children’s library — before the witches descend.
Joyce Crick taught German at University College London for many years. Since her retirement she has translated a variety of texts, including Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams for Oxford World’s Classics, which was awarded the Schlegel-Tieck prize in 2000, and Selected Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The tales gathered by the Grimm brothers are at once familiar, fantastic, homely, and frightening.
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Image credit: Doppelporträt der Brüder Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, 1855. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The post The Grimms and ‘Tales for Children and the Household’ appeared first on OUPblog.
Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version. Philip Pullman. 2012. Penguin. 400 pages.
Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version is a collection of fifty fairy tales. I was familiar with almost half of these, though it had probably been two decades since I last read some of them. Half of the stories were completely new to me. I probably found a few new favorites. At the conclusion of each story, Pullman shares facts, details, and opinions on the story. He tells us the type of story it is, what other tales are similar, what other cultures this type of story can be found in, what changes he made and why, what changes he would have made but didn't because he wasn't trying to write a novel, what he really thinks of each story. I found these sections to be interesting. Of course, I enjoyed the fairy tales. Some stories better than others, of course, a handful I could have done without completely. Still, I found the collection as a whole to be quite fun! The kind of book that you can read a story or two a day for several weeks of entertainment. This is NOT a book to rush through. Reading two or three fairy tales in a day is great, reading thirty a day, well, it's just TOO MUCH. You may not love, love, love each and every story in the collection. You may not find all of them to be equally worthy of your time. But. Chances are you'll find something to enjoy!
- The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich
- The Cat and the Mouse Set Up House
- The Boy Who Left Home To Find Out About the Shivers
- Faithful Johannes
- The Twelve Brothers
- Little Brother and Little Sister
- Rapunzel
- The Three Little Men in the Woods
- Hansel and Gretel
- The Three Snake Leaves
- The Fisherman and His Wife
- The Brave Little Tailor
- Cinderella
- The Riddle
- The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage
- Little Red Riding Hood
- The Musicians of Bremen
- The Singing Bone
- The Devil with Three Golden Hairs
- The Girl with No Hands
- The Elves
- The Robber Bridegroom
- Godfather Death
- The Juniper Tree
- Briar Rose [Sleeping Beauty]
- Snow White
- Rumpelstiltskin
- The Golden Bird
- Farmerkin
- Thousandfurs
- Jorinda and Joringel
- Six Who Made Their Way in the World
- Gambling Hans
- The Singing, Springing Lark
- The Goose Girl
- Bearskin
- The Two Traveling Companions
- Hans-my-Hedgehog
- The Little Shroud
- The Stolen Pennies
- The Donkey Cabbage
- One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes
- The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces [Twelve Dancing Princesses]
- Iron Hans
- Mount Simeli
- Lazy Heinz
- Strong Hans
- The Moon
- The Goose Girl at the Spring
- The Nixie of the Millpond
© 2012 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
“Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm,” then, is effectively an album in which a gifted contemporary composer covers classic songs. As Mr. Pullman notes, an enormous relief and pleasure “comes over the writer who realizes that it’s not necessary to invent: the substance of the tale is there already, just as the sequence of chords in a song is there ready for the jazz musician.” And his repertory is undeniably first-rate. These stories, honed through generations of tellers, are the survivors of literary evolution. They are here because they work.
Recognizing this, Mr. Pullman keeps his touch light, lending the stories a plain-spoken, casual voice and respecting the strange transformations, reversals of fortune and patterns of three that give them their power. He concludes each tale with a brief analytical note — praising or criticizing the story, pulling out a piquant detail, sometimes suggesting improvements. This is shoptalk, essentially — an expert narrator pointing out the storytelling triumphs or missteps of his forebears — and it is fascinating.
From an excellent New York Times piece on Philip Pullman’s new fairy tale collection. Highly recommended.
The Red Shoes
Karen longs for a pair of red shoes she spies in town, and hoards her pennies. Soon, her simple pleasures are forgotten, consumed by her fantasies about the fabulous shoes. Finally, she wears them to a great ball and learns that the shoes have truly come to control her as they had controlled her thoughts. Will the spell be broken? A classic Andersen fairy tale.
If you liked this, try:
Twelve Dancing Princesses
Thumbelina
The Emperor's New Clothes
Sleeping Beauty
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
Thumbelina by Susan Jeffers
Once upon a time there was a woman who was sad because she had no children. One day she planted a magic seed and from the seed grew a flower. Inside the flower was a tiny, exquisite girl no bigger than the woman's thumb. Her name was Thumbelina. The two lived happily together until an ugly old toad snuck in and snatched Thumbelina away. So began Thumbelina's adventures...A beautiful version of a classic tale with illustrations by Susan Jeffers...
If you liked this, try:
The Princess and the Pea
Pretty Salma
Rumpelstiltskin
The Three Pigs
The Tale of the Firebird
Twelve Dancing Princesses, by Rachel Isadora
A Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator gives this classic fairy tale a brand-new setting!
Night after night, the twelve princesses mysteriously wear out their shoes. But how? The king promises a great reward to any man who can solve the mystery. Rachel Isadora has revitalized and reimagined this well-loved Brothers Grimm fairytale by bringing the story of the twelve princesses to Africa...
If you liked this, try:The Fisherman and his Wife
Sleeping Beauty
Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave
Puss in Boots
The Wild Swans
by Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams, illustrated by Shadra Strickland. Turner, 2012. (Advance Review Copy). This is a fun twist on the fairy princess story. B. B. Bright, Princess of Light, is living on Bee Isle, floating in "Bright World" between "Other World" and "Raven World", where her parents used to be King and Queen until they got killed in a war. B. B. is cared for by three
Halloween’s just around the corner which means All Hallows Read is too. When Neil Gaiman first proposed this idea of giving books for Halloween I offered some suggestions, among them Adam Gidwitz’s fairy tale debut, A Tale Dark and Grimm. Now Adam is back with In a Glass Grimmly, as macabre and entertaining as his first book, and I thought it would be fun to see what he had to say about fairy tales, their reputation, and other related topics.
For those readers unfamiliar with your two books, how about a twitteresque description. Not too much more than 140 characters that is!
Two children travel through the funniest, weirdest, darkest Grimm tales, facing horrible parents, cruel peers, and other monsters. And—most painfully of all—themselves. (147! I’m a champion!)
Since you are a sort of fairy tale nerd (as am I) what is your take on my impression that for the general public fairies and fairy tales continue to have an image problem. Seems to me that for all the urban fantasy out there (in books, movies, and television shows), many still associate fairy tales with sparkly teeny tiny women flitting about with wings, pink, and Disney. Would you agree? Disagree?
I agree. And most of these adaptations don’t really help the cause at all. Most of the current adaptations of Grimm fairy tales take details from the original tales and use them as a jumping off point to tell their own story and to do their own thing. They toss the form and the style of the fairy tale out the window. I think this is a great waste. Fairy tales have endured not only because of the stories they tell but also because of how they tell them. Fairy tales are told simply, matter-of-factly; they are brief; they deal with the deepest of emotions–pain, humiliation, betrayal, lostness (if you will)–without any hyperbole or drama. The Grimm fairy tales in crystalize our most essential emotions. These modern adaptations, for the most part, have nothing to do with our deepest human emotions. They miss the point of fairy tales altogether.
Another criticism fairy tales get is that they are violent yet you seem to have embraced that idea and run with it. Why?
The real fairy tales are indeed quite violent. But the violence is not gratuitous. On the contrary, it is essential to fairy tales’ task. One of fairy tales’ methods of speaking to the readers’ deepest emotions is a technique I like to call “tears into blood.” There is a wonderful Grimm tale called “The Seven Ravens,” in which a father loves his one little daughter so much more than his seven boys that he wishes they would turn into birds and fly away–which they promptly do. When the little girl discovers that her brothers’ disappearance is due to her father loving her more than he loved the boys, she runs away from home to find them. She is given a chicken bone by the stars (yep, you read that right), and told that it will open the Crystal Mountain where the boys are trapped. The little girl journeys to the mountain but, upon arriving, realizes that she has lost the chicken bone. At this moment, any real child’s feelings of guilt would be extraordinary. Not only was it indirectly her fault that her brothers were turned into birds, but in losing the chicken bone she has lost the ability to save them.
Now, do a little thought-experiment with me. Imagine that “The Seven Ravens,” at this critical juncture, abruptly changed genres and became adult realistic fiction. What would the little girl do? She would live out her days trying to come to terms with her guilt, failing in the majority of her relationships and wondering what could have been. Right? Very depressing. Now, let’s imagine that “The Seven Ravens”, at the moment when the girl discovers the loss of the bone, switches from fairy tale to middle grade adventure novel. In this scenario, the girl would remember a little piece of wire that she received in the first chapter, and she would pick the lock on the door to the mountain and free her brothers. Either that or the bad guy would show up and she’d have to fight him.
But “The Seven Ravens” is a fairy tale. So what happens? The little girl cuts off her finger. And then she slides it into the lock on the door to the Crystal Mountain, and, without any further explanation, the door opens, and she sets her brothers free. This solution raises a series of questions (why the heck does her finger open the door? for example). But what this solution does for the reader is that it takes all the guilt the girl was feeling–about the transformation of her brothers, about the lost chicken bone–into blood. It turns emotional pain into physical pain. It turns tears into blood.
But why is this good? Because every child has cut himself. Every child has been bruised or bled. And so every child knows that the blood stops eventually, the wound scabs over, the bruise yellows and fades. Fairy tale violence teaches the child that emotional wounds heal. That salty tears dry. That no matter the pain, victory is possible.
In your first book you stuck pretty closely to several Grimm fairy tales. This time you branch out a bit. How did you end up with the tales you did retell and what made you move farther into your own original ones?
Thematic considerations and practical ones. First, the thematic: The emotional journey of A TALE DARK AND GRIMM is the children’s evolving relationship towards parents. The journey of IN A GLASS GRIMMLY is about peers. There were certain tales–”The Emperor’s New Clothes,” for example, and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”–that dealt with issues of peers and peer-pressure beautifully, that I really wanted to include. The practical consideration was that I had settled on calling the children Jack and Jill, mostly because that was another folkloric pairing (like Hansel and Gretel) that kids would recognize. (I briefly considered the Grimm Jorinda and Joringel, but I just didn’t think those characters have the same instant name recognition, you know?). So, once I settled on Jack and Jill, that suggested the famous Jack stories, such as the gruesome “Jack the Giant Killer” and the popular “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
I’m curious about your research. In addition to presumably reading a ton of fairy tales, what other research have you done?
I spent most of 2012 living in Europe–mostly in France. My wife was doing her dissertation research in medieval history. I, on the other hand, was eating a ridiculous amount of bread, writing in the mornings, and traveling on the weekends. I explored the Black Forest. I found the Crystal Mountain (well, I think I did). I walked under white cliffs along an endless beach (see the chapter “The Giant Killer” in IN A GLASS GRIMMLY). So I certainly did some geographical and scenic research. I also play with language in my books, particularly regarding characters’ names. So I had some German friends I consulted with on the name of the giant salamander that appears near the end of IN A GLASS GRIMMLY, and I spent a lot of time buried in the Gaelic dictionary developing the names of the giants. Finally, I read a fair amount of secondary material on the fairy tales, to ensure that I was honoring their traditions as well as their content.
Your books are being rightly recommended as fun Halloween-related horror. Do you have any others that you might want to recommend to go with them?
I love Laura Amy Schlitz’s SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS –very creepy, very Victorian, and very dark. It’s got a witch, a magic amulet, a murderous puppeteer, and a little girl who has to visit a graveyard every year on her birthday. What’s not to love?
The other day one of my students who loves your books was railing about the oddity of fairy tales. Why, she ranted, does Gretel have to use a bone for a key in the first book? Why can’t she just just a carefully constructed object that doesn’t involve..let’s see how to phrase this so as not to spoil things….nasty personal stuff? How would you respond to her and others like her?
Fairy tales don’t make any sense. That’s the wonderful thing about them. Their strangeness is their beauty. Also, it’s hilarious.
What’s next?
One more Grimm book. This one is about a boy named Coal and a girl named Ash. Coal is based on the simpleton character that recurs throughout Grimm’s fairy tales–the boy who everyone thinks is stupid, but turns out to possess a special wisdom. Ash is short for Ashputtle. Also known as Cinderella. If you know the Grimm version of Cinderella, you know this book will be just as strange and dark as the two that preceded it.
And to end, for fun, a few questions that Proust also had to answer (and Vanity Fair has taken-off from for years).
What is your idea of happiness?
Writing in my pajamas in the morning; a huge, rare cheeseburger for lunch; an afternoon with my wife and friends; and an evening with just my wife.
What is your idea of misery?
A world with no introspection. For this reason, I fear for our society. Who needs Big Brother and thoughtcrime, when self-awareness is obliterated by a constant stream of chattering screens?
If not yourself, who would you like to be?
An astronaut.
Where would you like to live?
Most of the year in Brooklyn, and then the month of June in Paris. Or the White House. They have a bowling alley, a basketball court, and a private chef. As long as I didn’t have to do any of that annoying work that the dude who lives there has to do.
What is your favorite food and drink?
My favorite food is a huge, rare cheeseburger. My favorite drink is not for kids, so I’ll leave it out.
What is your present state of mind?
What did Proust say? Bored because of these questions? No. Hungry, because I keep talking about cheeseburgers.
Also at Huffington Post.
Here’s a BBC3 podcast with a brief interview with Philip Pullman on his new fairy tale collection and then, best of all, his reading from one of them, “The Three Snake Leaves.”
The Goldilocks Variations. Allan Ahlberg. Illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg. 2012. Candlewick. 40 pages.For anyone who enjoys The Three Little Bears will enjoy this oh-so-creative book of variations by Allan Ahlberg. (This may just be my favorite Ahlberg title!) Some of the offerings include: "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Goldilocks and the 33 Bears," "Goldilocks and the Bliim," "Goldilocks and the Furniture," "Goldilocks The Play," "Goldilocks and...Everybody," and "Goldilocks...Alone?" The language is fun and playful and just right.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears begins,
"There was once a cheeky girl. Her name, or nickname rather, on account of her corn-colored hair, was Goldilocks. One morning, Goldilocks went for a walk in the woods, found a little cottage, climbed in through a window, and messed around for a bit. This cottage was the home of...The Three Bears."
and it ends,
"Meanwhile, the great big father bear and the middle-size mother bear cuddled up their sad little small wee baby bear and gave him some of their porridge. And, later on, a boiled egg in his own little eggcup. Some bread and butter soldiers to dip in it. And a cup of tea. And later on still, a lovely little BUN. Bears love buns."
I really enjoyed the playfulness of Goldilocks and the 33 Bears. In part, it reads,
Well, Goldilocks sat on a great many chairs and broke most of them. She came upon a great many bowls of porridge and ate too many of them. She climbed the stairs, with her terribly bulgy tummy, flopped down onto the nearest bed--there were dozens of them--and fell asleep in it. Then...homeward came the bears! The great big father bear saw the open window. The middle-size mother bear saw the broken chairs. The tall and skinny teenage bears saw very little. They were still dawdling in the woods. The younger bears saw nothing at all. They were having a sleepover at their friend's house. The very baby bear also saw nothing. She was having a sleepover on her daddy's back. But the little small wee bears--there were two of them--saw EVERYTHING.
That story also happily ends with buns because BEARS LOVE BUNS.
I thought Goldilocks the Play was BRILLIANT. I just LOVED it!!! The other variations were nice too. I would definitely recommend this one!!!
Read The Goldilocks Variations
- If you enjoy playful, fun variations or "fractured" fairy tales
- If you enjoy fairy tales
- If you love detailed, creative books
Cinderella: A Three-Dimensional Fairy Tale Theater. Jane Ray. 2012. Candlewick. 12 pages. For those that love Cinderella, this may be a must. It may also be a must for those that love intricate, delicate, detailed pop-up illustrations. Some may be fascinated by the illustrations alone. And you could definitely spend time looking at them! The text of this one is revealed by opening the curtains on each side of the stage. This probably wouldn't be a great choice for young(er) children because the pop-ups are so delicate. But for older children who still enjoy Cinderella, it would be great.
Read Cinderella
- If you love Cinderella, if you love reading different versions of the story
- If you love pop-up books, if you love detailed three-dimensional art
Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? And Other Notorious Nursery Tale Mysteries. David Levinthal. Illustrations by John Nickle. 2012. Random House. 40 pages.A mystery-detective themed picture book that fractures fairy tales! Tales (cases) include: Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel, Humpty Dumpty, Snow White, and Jack and the Beanstalk. The narrator (a frog) is a cop named Binky. These are his cases, all of them solved. The book was silly, and for those looking to introduce little ones to the genre of detective stories (finding clues, solving cases, questioning witnesses, etc.) it would be a good fit.
Read Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?
- If you enjoy fractured fairy tales
- If you love mystery and detective stories
© 2012 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
By: dianalevinart,
on 11/12/2012
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Introducing the Gothic Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland Antique Style Pendant. Monsters are not just for Halloween anymore. Even as a grotesque zombie, the Mad Hatter seems to keep his elegant charm. If you like Alice in Wonderland but want to see something beyond the Disney or Tim Burton version, than this pendant was made just for you.
The Mad Hatter has a corpse-like greenish complexion and vacant zombie eyes. He is wearing his traditional suite and funky bow tie and an oversize top hat. On top of the hat sits a little pesky demon ready to munch on some brains.
The glass cameo is set in a beautiful Antique Vintage Bronze Setting. The whole piece measures 40mm Tall x 35mm Wide.
It comes with a vintage Antique bronze chain. The chain is 24″ in length but can easily be adjusted to any length. Please convo me if you would like it shortened.
Love Alice in Wonderland? Check out these other cute pendants of other characters:
White Rabbit
Queen of Hearts
Alice in Wonderland
Cheshire Cat
By: dianalevinart,
on 11/12/2012
Blog:
Diana Levin Illustration
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
All posts,
Product Catalog,
Sale Items,
alice in wonderland,
dark alice in wonderland,
dark mad hatter,
fairy tales,
fantasy art,
gothic cameo pendant,
gothic fantasy art,
gothic mad hatter,
mad hatter,
mad hatter necklace,
monster,
zombie mad hatter,
Add a tag
Introducing the Gothic Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland Antique Style Pendant. Monsters are not just for Halloween anymore. Even as a grotesque zombie, the Mad Hatter seems to keep his elegant charm. If you like Alice in Wonderland but want to see something beyond the Disney or Tim Burton version, than this pendant was made just for you.
The Mad Hatter has a corpse-like greenish complexion and vacant zombie eyes. He is wearing his traditional suite and funky bow tie and an oversize top hat. On top of the hat sits a little pesky demon ready to munch on some brains.
The glass cameo is set in a beautiful Antique Vintage Bronze Setting. The whole piece measures 40mm Tall x 35mm Wide.
It comes with a vintage Antique bronze chain. The chain is 24″ in length but can easily be adjusted to any length. Please convo me if you would like it shortened.
Love Alice in Wonderland? Check out these other cute pendants of other characters:
White Rabbit
Queen of Hearts
Alice in Wonderland
Cheshire Cat
While Adele was regaling us with stories from her American visit, I was intrigued by one of the talks she went to titled ‘Literary Friendships’. I was struck anew by the regard authors hold for other authors. The following is a list of books that are interconnected in different ways.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Just Listen by Sarah Dessen and Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers
Speak is one of those novels that really sticks with the reader – and authors are readers too
. Some Girls Are pays homage to Speak, and the scene where Miranda is sexually assaulted, by mirroring it in the first scene of the book. That scene is used as the spark for the rest of the plot. Just Listen has a similar sexual assault scene at a party. Much more muted than Speak and Some Girls Are, it still manages to retain Speak’s message and tone.
I think it speaks to how moving and essential Speak (especially that scene) is. It’s been brought back to life in all of these literary variations. I’m so glad the message is still being talked about and that each of the above titles offers a slightly different tone and reaction by the characters. It’s also interesting to see the many variations of the social fallout from such an attack. In Some Girls Are the sexual assault against the main character is used as a platform to begin an extreme and escalating bullying campaign.
Tithe Series by Holly Black and The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare
These two literary friends cheekily wrote in scenes containing characters from the others’ work. The band Clary listens to ‘Stepping Razor’ appears in Tithe as a secondary character’s (Ellen) band. Clary and Jace also meet the Unseelie Queen, while Kaylee in Tithe catches glimpses of Jace and Clary throughout the series.
Sarah Dessen
Sarah Dessen often has previous main characters make cameos in her later books, due to her setting. Dessen has her stories centered in the fictional town of Lakeview, and her characters will often vacation in Colby. They aren’t always known to our main protagonist of the moment, so sometimes it’s just a description or the way the character thinks and you are left with an ‘I know that voice’ feeling.
Melina Marchetta
Melina tricks me every time. Don’t get me wrong, I knew The Piper’s Son was a companion to Saving Francesca, but did you know that Ben (the violinist) from Jellicoe features in Piper’s? (He is Justine’s crush). One of the mullet brothers ends up dating the kitchen hand who Tom works with at the pub. Jonah’s little brother, Danny (Jellicoe), is the protagonist of The Gorgon In The Gully.
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Reblogged this on Wild About Words and commented:
Mary Pleiss is talking about witches, fairy tales, and stereotyping on Ingrid’s blog. Check it out.
Mary, great post! I just saw the movie Oz, and am wondering on your take on the three witches in that movie. Is this a case of “we’ve come a long way, baby” or “two steps back”?
Hi, L. Marie–I haven’t seen Oz, and to be honest, it’s because the trailer worried me. It looked to me as though they were taking this world whose original creator deliberately created well-rounded female characters with power and agency, and using it to tell a story about them giving up that power to a male outsider who’s supposed to “save” them and find himself in the process–in other words, making a story that had been about women all about the guy. It looked like a step back to me–but as I said, I can’t truly judge until I’ve seen it.
What did you think about it? I’d really love to get some opinions from thoughtful viewers!
Mary, the movie is mostly eye candy. Wonderful colors, dazzling scenery. While I can understand the desire to showcase the wizard’s arrival in Oz, basically your assessment is correct. It also involves women at odds with each other over a man–a definite step back. They act, but their actions are a curdled form of agency. I don’t think you have to make a character weak in order to show another character’s strengths. But imho, the movie shows the witches to be weak to make the “wizard” appear strong.
I haven’t seen the new OZ movie, but I love this discussion. Off to the movie theater…