France Month: Les trois petits cochons by Sylvie Bessard (Auteur), Agnès Lestrade (de) (Auteur)

Les trois petits cochons by Sylvie Bessard (Auteur), Agnès Lestrade (de) (Auteur)

Book description:

Il était une fois trois petits cochons qui voulaient construire leurs maisons. Le premier construisit sa maison avec de la paille, le deuxième avec du bois, et le troisième avec des briques. Les deux frères du troisième petit cochon se moquèrent de lui, mais, quand le loup vint à souffler sur leurs maisons pour les faire voler en éclats, ils furent bien contents d’aller trouver refuge dans la maison de briques...

New Book: Hans My Hedgehog: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm by Kate Coombs and John Nickle

Hans My Hedgehog: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm by Kate Coombs (Adapter), Brothers Grimm (Author), John Nickle (Illustrator) was released this past Tuesday.

I haven't seen copy in person, but I'm always thrilled with a new picture book featuring one of the less popular fairy tales. Hans My Hedgehog is a sentimental favorite of many fairy tale fans and hopefully this book will also introduce the tale to a new audience.

Book description:

A classic tale of love and acceptance from the Brothers Grimm is beautifully rendered in this magical retelling.Hans is an unusual boy. Born a hedgehog from the waist up, he knows what it’s like to truly be an outcast. Even his amazing fiddle playing can’t help him fit in. So Hans flees to the forest with his herd of loyal pigs and only his music to keep him company. But then a most unusual thing happens: When Hans crosses paths with two kings with two lovely daughters, his luck starts to change. Will this lonely soul find true love after all?

This lively and lyrical retelling of the classic Grimm’s tale, paired with lush, detailed illustrations, reminds us of the power of music, the importance of belonging, and the transformative effect of love.

The reviews for the book so far are great--Kirkus starred it--and there is an interview with Kate Coombs at The Enchanted Inkpot this week, too. Most of the interview is about Coombs work as an author, but she answered a few questions about fairy tales, too. Here's an excerpt:

I don't see as many picture book fairy tales these days. Why is that?

Hans My Hedgehog is kind of an anomaly because very few picture book retellings of fairy tales are being published right now, after a heyday that took place 20 or so years ago. Many parents want their children to jump into reading chapter books right out of kindergarten. They seem to think that picture books are babyish. This is unfortunate because picture books for children in grades 1-3 can make a wonderful bridge and hook kids into wanting to read more.

Could you talk a little about fairy tale retellings for middle grade and young adult readers?

Even as the picture book fairy tale is showing signs of becoming extinct, novelizations for MG/YA are really taking off. So at least we aren't losing the stories altogether! I would even say that the 1990s and this new century have brought a golden age of fairy tale retellings for older children. For example, consider the incredible variety of Cinderella retellings: you get Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, which famously imagines an explanation for Cinderella's passiveness; you get a lesbian Cinderella tale in Malinda Lo's Ash; and you get a cyborg Cinderella in Marissa Meyer's new book, Cinder. I love seeing what different authors do with the same story bones. The retelling movement is starting to reach beyond European tales more frequently, I am happy to say. Grace Lin's book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, draws on Chinese folklore, and Jasmine Richard's The Book of Wonders uses Scheherazade and Sinbad to create something new. I can't wait to see what happens next.

What advice do you have for someone planning on doing an MG/YA retelling?

The retellings are coming fast and furiously, so as an author, you have to be careful what you choose to retell. A few years ago, I had just about finished a novelization of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," a story I chose because no one had done much with it, when someone else beat me to the punch. Since then, another half dozen versions have come out! I won't even tell you the story I'm tinkering with now. Suffice it to say, it's a lesser known fairy tale.

Whatever you decide to retell, you should work on giving your version a unique spin, the way Meyer did with Cinder, the way Jane Yolen did recently in her Appalachian Snow White retelling, Snow in Summer. It isn't enough to retell a story: you have to make it your own. That's really what Gail Carson Levine did with the Cinderella story. That and her fine characterization are what keep Ella Enchanted in print.

I'm hoping this fairy tale popularity will inspire publishers to give us some new beautiful fairy tale picture books. I have a lot of more obscure but interesting ones on my wishlist actually after working on all of these SurLaLune compilations and translating a few. There are some great Cinderellas out there as well as Beauty and the Beast and Snow White.

New Book: Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner

 

Marina Warner has a new book out this year, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, which has already been released in the UK but won't be available in the US until March. But the press is hot on it in the UK, so I wanted to share today. If you are in the UK, you can have joy now and order the book right away. In the US, you can order the book from the UK now or wait until March. I'm waiting to spare my budget, of course, but I must admit I prefer the UK cover (the one on the left). What about you?

Book description (UK edition):

From the Inside Flap

Magic is not simply a matter of the occult arts, but a whole way of thinking, of dreaming the impossible. As such it has tremendous force in opening the mind to new realms of achievement: imagination precedes the fact. It used to be associated with wisdom, understanding the powers of nature, and with technical ingenuity that could let men do things they had never dreamed of before.

The supreme fiction of this magical thinking is The Arabian Nights, with its flying carpets, hidden treasure and sudden revelations. Translated into French and English in the early days of the Enlightenment, this became a best-seller among intellectuals, when it was still thought of in the Arab world as a mere collection of folk tales. For thinkers of the West the book's strangeness opened visions of transformation: dreams of flight,speaking objects, virtual money, and the power of the word to bring about change.Its tales create a poetic image of the impossible, a parable of secret knowledge and power. Above all they have the fascination of the strange - the belief that true knowledge lies elsewhere, in a mysterious realm of wonder.

As part of her exploration into the prophetic enchantments of the Nights Marina Warner retells some of the most wonderful and lesser known stories. She explores the figure of the dark magician or magus, from Solomon to the wicked uncle in Aladdin; the complex vitality of the jinn, or genies; animal metamorphoses and flying carpets.Her narrative reveals that magical thinking, as conveyed by these stories, governs many aspects of experience, even now.In this respect, the east and west have been in fruitful dialogue. Writers and artists in every medium have found themselves by adopting Oriental disguise. With startling originality and impeccable research, this ground-breaking book shows how magic, in the deepest sense, helped to create the modern world, and how profoundly it is still inscribed in the way we think today.

About the Author

Marina Warner spent her early years in Cairo, and was educated at a convent in Berkshire, and then in Brussels and London, before studying modern languages at Oxford. She is an internationally acclaimed cultural historian, critic, novelist and short story writer. From her early books on the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, to her bestselling studies of fairy tales and folk stories, From the Beast to the Blonde and No Go the Bogeyman, her work has explored different figures in myth and fairy tale and the art and literature they have inspired. She lectures widely in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, and is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex. She was appointed CBE in 2008.

And from Stranger Magic by Marina Warner: review: Sameer Rahim revels in 1,001 tales that last a lifetime, reading Marina Warner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, the first few paragraphs to whet your interest:

The earliest translations of The Arabian Nights appeared around the same time as the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume began debunking Biblical miracles from the “ignorant and barbarous nations” of the East. As the West became more rationalist, Nights-fever caught on among countless artists for whom the tales were an outlet for all sorts of fantasies, both magical and sexual.

Mozart was given a copy by his Italian landlady and picked up themes for his oriental opera The Abduction from the Seraglio; Coleridge read the tales with a “strange mixture of obscure dread and intense desire”, the same feelings he evokes in “Kubla Khan”; and Dickens’s homage to the Nights can be found in A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge tries to trap the Ghost of Christmas Past with a candle extinguisher, like the Fisherman coaxing the Genie back into his magic lamp.

Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic ranges widely, and somewhat wildly, from the earliest Western interpretations to Hollywood films such as The Thief of Baghdad. She takes 15 of her favourite tales and spins a knowledgeable but rather haphazard cultural history.

Warner does not read Arabic and shows little interest in the linguistic texture of the tales – how, for example, any attempt to imitate the rhymed, repetitive prose leads to monstrosities like Richard Burton’s Victorian version, but how turning it into neat English does not reflect its oral origins. She also makes a point of denying their Arab-ness: The Nights, she writes, “has no known author or named authors, no settled shape or length, no fixed table of contents, no definite birthplace or linguistic origin”. But while the stories are certainly universal, they are also firmly rooted in the medieval Islamic world.

France Month: Raiponce illustrated by Princess Camcam

Minicontes classiques : Raiponce par Anne Royer (Auteur), D'après les Frères Grimm (Auteur), Princesse Camcam (Illustrations) is the first Rapunzel I've featured for France month. Yes, the tale is German but there are some early French Rapunzels around, too. (There's a few in my Rapunzel and Other Maiden in the Tower Tales From Around the World). However, the tale isn't well-represented in French picture books beyond the blitz of Disney tie-ins. This book is illustrated by Princess Camcam who also illustrated the brunette Cinderella I shared a few weeks ago.

Book description:

« Il était une fois un homme et une femme qui attendaient leur premier enfant. Derrière leur maison, il y avait un jardin où poussaient de magnifiques fleurs. Quand la femme les aperçut, elle ne voulut rien manger d autre que ces fleurs nommées raiponce. Or ce jardin appartenait à une redoutable magicienne... » Trop d'enfants aujourd'hui ne connaissent plus les contes classiques. Ces contes qui, pourtant, aident à grandir, enrichissent l imaginaire de milles et une créatures, fées, princesses ou dragons et apportent à la vie une morale pleine d'humour où les méchants sont punis et les plus petits récompensés. Des contes qui donnent envie d'apprendre à lire et plus tard de raconter, transmettre l'histoire à ses enfants ! Pour faciliter l'accès à cette formidable richesse de la littérature jeunesse, voilà une collection à petit prix, avec des histoires magnifiquement illustrées et surtout des textes, adaptés aux enfants, qui ont su garder l impertinence, l ambiance et les tournures si particulières des contes de fées...

France Month: Le Petit Chaperon rouge par Jean Claverie

Le Petit Chaperon rouge par Jean Claverie is a fun take on Little Red Riding Hood. I'll let the illustrations speak for themselves. This is in at least a second edition so it has been a popular interpretation. Claverie is also a popular illustrator. I really would love to see the entire book...

France Month: Les six frères cygnes par Elsa Oriol (Illustrateur)

Les six frères cygnes par Wilhelm Grimm (Auteur), Jacob Grimm (Auteur), Elsa Oriol (Illustrateur) is better known as The Six Swans to us in English. I was thrilled to find so many illustrations from this book to share for it is a beloved tale, not often seen illustrated in picture books.

Book description:

La fratrie des frères Grimm se composait de cinq garçons et d'une fille, très importante dans l'histoire familiale, C'est pourquoi Les six frères cygnes occupent une place particulière parmi les contes que les frères Grimm ont fixés par écrit. Nous sommes ici d'emblée au cœur de toutes les tensions: la famille éclatée, recomposée, est source d'épreuves, de rivalités, de désirs, d'interdits, de transgressions et c'est seulement en surmontant ces épreuves que la fratrie parviendra à dénouer les fils du sortilège
et à construire enfin son destin.

Picture Book: Me and You by Anthony Browne

While I have Goldilocks on everyone's brain today, I wanted to share a somewhat recent release (2010) that I missed until I few weeks ago and have been saving until Goldilocks was on my mind. The book is Me and You by Anthony Browne as author and illustrator who has offered us interesting fairy tale visions in the past.

Book description:

A small bear goes for a stroll in the park with his parents, leaving their bowls of porridge cooling on the kitchen table. Meanwhile, a girl with golden hair is hopelessly lost in a big, frightening city when she comes across a house with the door left invitingly open. Inside are three bowls of porridge in the kitchen, three chairs in the living room, and three comfortable-looking beds upstairs, and no one seems to be home . . .

For me, it's hard to see Goldilocks in a fresh way, but this book definitely puts a different twist on a the tale and makes it a different story. Goldilocks is not the brat she is in so many versions, think James Marshall's version in particular which I also adore.