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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Largest Pair of Jeans Ever

Seamstresses in Peru decided to get to the Guinness World Record for the largest pair of jeans ever. The pair of jeans measures 141 feet tall and 98 feet wide and weighs in at 7.5 tons. The current record is held by the city of Medellin in Columbia. That pair was 114 feet tall and 82 feet wide. It sounds like they are just waiting for their record setting jeans to be accepted by Guinness. There wasn’t a Guinness representative present, but a notary who can send documentation to the group was. The pants will be recycled as backpacks for school children. [via DamnCoolPics] More images after a break.......

Monday, December 21, 2009

Snow Queen Week: Susan Jeffers

Another picture book of the Snow Queen, this time with illustrations by Susan Jeffers, another illustrator who has applied her talent to many fairy tale renderings. The text in this one is retold from Andersen's tale by Amy Ehrlich.

The book has been reprinted with a few covers. The one at the top of the post is from 2006. The original cover from 1983 is below:

Jeffers has also illustrated The Wild Swans, Thumbelina, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel. I also shared her Nutcracker earlier this month. Her picture book version of Silent Night is my personal favorite of all her work.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Snow Queen Week: Christian Birmingham

I didn't realize when I planned this week as Snow Queen Week that so much of the world would already be buried under record amounts of snow. I hope my readers are warm, cozy and safe and that the weather clears soon enough to make holiday travel possible. I merely think the tale is a wonderful companion to tomorrow's Winter Solstice. I try to offer a balanced blog, too, for those with other belief systems who don't celebrate Christmas (although I do!).

Unlike last week when I offered so many novelty items for Frog Prince Week, this week will have an abundance of books. The last few years have produced a few absolutely beautiful renditions of the tale by modern artists. One of my favorites is Christian Birmingham, who is more readily available in the UK and usually published a year earlier there than here in the states. He is also fortunately a prolific illustrator and some of his projects are fairy tales, such as Snow Queen.

Birmingham's work is impressionistic and he uses light beautifully. He has illustrated many Christmas stories, including Wenceslas: The Eternal Christmas Story, The Night Before Christmas and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. (He seems to pick a lot of stories with snow in them.)

He has also illustrated Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid and The Classic Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen.

The images came from Books Illustrated Ltd: The Fine Art of Illustration, the gallery that sells Birmingham's original works.

For those of us for whom original artwork is out of the budget, the Snow Queen book is affordable and available at the Amazon US and the Amazon.UK stores.

Cinderella in Autumn at the Guardian

Cinderella in Autumn: A new short story by Hilary Mantel, illustrated by Posy Simmonds is a holiday gift from The Guardian.

Mantel also wrote Wicked parents in fairytales for the Guardian back in October, a nice companion piece to her story.

I love the Guardian. And someone or someones there loves fairy tales, bless them.

Edit: The Fairy Tale Cupboard-another great fairy tale blog that focuses on happenings and things in the UK--also shared links to the story today. See What happened to Cinderella?

Mamtha Mohandas Photoshoot

Back in mollywood ,there are just a few popular heroines ,frankly no one ever really match and cop with the heat generated by kollywood or tollywood actress.But Impressive mamta has a word of her own.Both tollywood and kollywood badly wants her .She not only has a pretty face but she has an impressive record in singing too. Mamta Mohandas debuted in a Malayalam film Mayookham in 2005.Even though this Hariharan film didn’t attract many, everybody was watching the sensitive portrayal of Mamta. Her next film was with Mammooty’s Bus conductor in 2005.She crated some sort of controversy after the movie Lanka .Her Tamil debut film was Karu pazhaniappan directed film ,Sivappathigaram with Vishal Krishna.Then her stepped in Telgu industry through the film Yamadaonga in 2007 which was directed by SS Rajamouli. In the year 2009, she made a real comeback to Malayalam through a suspense thriller Passenger opposite to Dileep.And in Tamil through Guru En Aalu opposite to madhavan. bad news for malayalis ,mamta has established herself in Tollywood.Mamtha Mohandas cute photos.....12 More images after a break.......