has dropped in price on Amazon to $31.57 with a 21% discount on list price. The last time it dropped it didn't last for long and went back to list price rather quickly and stayed there for months. I don't claim to understand Amazon's pricing algorithms but I'm happy one of my favorites in the SurLaLune series is discounted.
WHAT IS A ‘PANTO’? All our shows are written and performed in the genre of ‘PANTO’. Very simply, a panto is family musical theatre that is affordable! The scripts are based on fairytales we all know and love. We like to say that the jokes are written for the adults but the magic is saved for the kids. The 4th wall is broken. We encourage the audience to interact with our actors, ‘Boo the step sisters and cheer for our Prince!’. Comedy is current, sourcing recent news stories and songs are from pop culture that fit in the show, moving the storyline along. It’s a fun treat that brings the whole family together and it only happens once a year, Christmas time.
‘Panto’ is derived from the popular British ‘pantomime’ and serves as many children’s first experience of live theatre.
has signed on to star in the onscreen special guest role of "The Magic Mirror" in “Snow White,” following in the tradition of several major stars that have played the role on the London stage; and Marina Sirtis, of Star Trek: The Next Generation
fame, will star opposite as The Wicked Queen. The production will be helmed by Bonnie Lythgoe from So You Think You Can Dance AU and choreographed by Dancing With the Stars’ Mark Ballas with American Idol’s Michael Orland serving as Musical Director. An updated version of the classic tale, “Snow White” features family-friendly magic, a comedic twist and modern music, including Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, The Village People’s YMCA, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Tickets will be on sale August 9 for “A Snow White Christmas,” running November 30-December 18 at the El Portal Theatre. 
Yes, you can see the fairy tale/folklore influence in pop culture waxing strong again. For example, last night on So You Think You Can Dance (U.S.) featured a routine inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. This after the siren/mermaid one from last month. And, yes, this is one of my favoritest shows and I'm rooting for Melanie to win it all although I love many of the dancers this season.
Here's a video of it:
From Disney's 'Order of the Seven' Lands Director (Exclusive) by Borys Kit:
While Universal and Relativity jockey over their rival Snow White movies, Disney is quietly making moves on its own revisionist Snow White feature, a live-action project now called The Order of the Seven.
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The unique project, which Disney has been developing since 2002, focuses a bit more on Snow’s seven companions, who aren't as cute and jolly as in the 1937 classic Disney animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In fact, the project, which was initially known as Snow and the Seven and had scripts by writers ranging from Michael Chabon to Jayson Rothwell, is evolving into more of an original action film, with the Snow White elements being minimized.
In this iteration, the seven are a 19th century-set disparate band of international warriors belonging to a centuries-old order who have lost their way. Their meeting with an Englishwoman being chased by an ancient evil is the catalyst for their redemption.
While the project is set in China, the warriors will be from locales near (the U.S.) and far (Russia), and each warrior will have a unique fighting style.
Starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Morrison, and Robert Carlyle, the show mixes the real world with a fairy-tale alternate universe. “We’re not interested in retelling fairy tales,” explained Edward Kitsis during one of the press conferences, “but in telling the parts you don’t know.”
In a town where time stands still, familiar characters from fairy tales—Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, and Little Red Riding Hood among others—live like ordinary folk and have no memory of their fantastical origins. The Wicked Queen is town mayor and Snow White teaches school. Drawn from the outside world into this alternate dimension by a small boy seeking help, comes the confused, unhappy Emma Swann (Jennifer Morrison) on a mission that she doesn’t understand, with a destiny she can’t remember.
“We’ll go back and forth between the worlds,” said Kitsis, “and we hope you love it.”
Princess. These days, it’s practically an epithet, but when the fairy tale was at its zenith, there was a clear correlation between hereditary rank and innate worth. Somehow, despite the shift in our values, there’s a certain segment of the population that is still held by the spell of the fairy tale princess. It’s not the fans of fairy tale retellings—who tend to subvert the princess—but little girls and their mothers, a demographic targeted by Disney. Between the two extremes, the princess occupies an uneasy territory between traditional values, progress, and reclamation. From word-of-mouth storytelling to printed texts to cinematic adaptations, the princess has been defined and redefined in remarkable ways.
edited by Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling. It is a Wild Swans/Six Swans retelling. My name is Emma Bear, and I am eleven years old. I live on Black Ankle Road beside the Licking River. I live in a palace. My father is a king. I have a fairy godfather. This summer I read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and learned how to make blue dye from a flower called woad. I have six brothers. My mother is dead. I’m in the seventh grade. My father remarried this summer. My favorite class is home ec. I love to sew. I make all my own clothes. My mother taught me how to sew. I can also knit, crochet, and quilt.
Yesterday my stepmother pointed her pinkie finger at my brothers and turned them all into swans. They were being too noisy. I’m never too noisy. I don’t talk at all.
This year I was failing choir. I opened my mouth to sing, and nothing came out. I hadn’t been able to say a word since my mother died. In my other classes, it was okay. Homework was okay. Math was okay, and English. Art was okay. I could write down answers on the black board. I carried around a pad of paper and a pen. You’d be surprised how often you don’t actually have to say anything. Mostly if I just nodded, it was okay. But choir doesn’t work that way. You can’t sing by writing on a pad of paper. But nothing came out of my mouth when I opened it.
and Pretty Monsters: Stories.
by Nina Crews
was released last month, a picture book. 
Jack receives beans from his neighbor and – lo and behold! – those beans lead him up a beanstalk and into the company of giants. How will he ever get back home? In her innovative photo-collage style, Nina Crews freshens up a beloved children’s tale for today’s young readers.
When artists in nineteenth-century Germany no longer had the economic security of working permanently either for the Church or the Crown, and thus had to face the challenges of the open art market, they had to invent marketing strategies in order to stand out above the keen competition at art exhibitions. They also had to satisfy the demands of the new buying class—the culturally interested and wealthy bourgeoisie. While the artists tried to fulfill their artistic ideals first, and were anxious not to commit themselves to short-lived fads or to commercial art, these challenges greatly affected their paintings, both in the choice of their subjects and in their execution. All the more interesting are the different means of promotion the artists devised to create a market for paintings truest to their artistic goals.
Moritz von Schwind's (1804–1871, fig. 1) marketing of his painting Cinderella (Aschenbrödel, 1852–1854, fig. 2),1 was particularly resourceful and ranged from the choice of an unconventional topic for a painting to its presentation at a most recognized exhibition. But, the painting's subject, fairy tales,2 were also one of Schwind's major artistic interests throughout his life. He was convinced that German folk tales should not be "despised"3 so readily. And so fairy tale motifs, such as in the Phantom in the Forest (Die Erscheinung im Walde), or in preliminary sketches for his fairy tale paintings Cinderella and The Seven Ravens (Die Sieben Raben), date back to the beginnings of his art career in the early 1820s, when fairy tales were just being rediscovered in Germany.4 Even when Schwind finally started work on the painting of Cinderella in 1852, fairy tales were not yet considered at all suitable for the highest of the painting genres, and generally had been limited to the graphic arts and book illustrations. Hence, his selecting so exceptional a motif was as risky as it was ambitious. It guaranteed that he would stand out from his competitors in the open art market and therefore attract the attention of the critics as well as potential buyers. Moreover, if the viewing public accepted German fairy tales as a subject of history paintings, he would be able to increase his work on fairy tales, definitely a favorite painting subject of his. But on the other hand, if his painting failed to win acceptance at exhibition, Schwind would have gained nothing but bad press, uncovered expenses, and the certainty that there was no market for his fairy tale paintings.5 Consequently, Schwind would not be able to successfully combine his own artistic goals with the demands of the open art market, and, so, he sought to assure the success of his first fairy tale painting, Cinderella, by additional marketing strategies.
This is an abridged version of a chapter of my doctoral thesis on illustrations and paintings of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen of the Brothers Grimm in Germany from 1819 to 1945, to be completed at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, in October 2007. I would like to thank Professor Frank Büttner and Professor Andrea Gottdang, along with the anonymous reviewer at Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, and Robert Alvin Adler for their helpful suggestions. I wish to extend my thanks to Dr. Hanna Dose, Deutsches Märchen- und Wesersagenmuseum Bad Oeynhausen, for allowing me to research the vast collection of xylographic reproductions on fairy tale paintings in the nineteenth century. —All translations are those of the author.
