Gift Ideas: Fairy Tale Coloring Books

Looking for stocking stuffers or just things to do while stuck inside this winter?  Here are some coloring books that are always a big hit. I love the stained glass ones myself. Many of these are also 4-for-3 on Amazon, so look for deals. Also note that some of these are full size and some are mini-books.  The minis make great stocking stuffers. I only included one Disney (for Tangled) since those are easy enough to find anywhere. These others tend to only be available through online shopping or special ordering.

Rackham Fairy Tale Stained Glass Coloring Book (Dover Coloring Books)

Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales Stained Glass Coloring Book (Dover Coloring Books)

 

Wizards and Dragons Stained Glass Coloring Book or the Wizards and Dragons Stained Glass Coloring Kit (Boxed Sets/Bindups)

Color Your Own Great Fairy Tale Illustrations

Rackham's Fairy Tale Coloring Book (Colouring Books)

Favorite Fairy Tales Coloring Book (Dover Pictorial Archives)

FAIRY TALE HIDDEN PICTURE COLORING BOOK

Light Up the Night (Disney Tangled) (Deluxe Coloring Book)

Sleeping Beauty Coloring Book (Dover Coloring Book)

The Sleeping Beauty (Coloring Book)

Giant Coloring Book (Set of 3) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio

The Little Mermaid Coloring Book

Little Fairy Tales Stained Glass Coloring Book (Dover Little Activity Books)

Beauty and the Beast Stained Glass Coloring Book (Dover Little Activity Books)

Little Mermaid Stained Glass Coloring Book (Dover Little Activity Books)

A Narrative Compass: Stories that Guide Women's Lives

A Narrative Compass: Stories that Guide Women's Lives edited by Betsy Hearne and Roberta Seelinger Trites is a book I only recently learned about and have added to my own list of "must acquire soon." It was released last year but I don't remember seeing it referenced anywhere.  Not that I get around all that much beyond the immediacy of fairy tale scholarship. Still, I would have noticed a book with one of Kay Nielsen's East of the Sun and West of the Moon illustrations on it. My brain is hard-wired to notice books like that after so many years.

Here's the book description from the publisher:

Each of us has a narrative compass, a story that has guided our lifework. In this extraordinary collection, women scholars from a variety of disciplines identify and examine the stories that have inspired them, haunted them, and shaped their research, from Little House on the Prairie to Little Women, from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Nancy Drew, Mary Jane, and even the Chinese memoir Jottings from the Transcendant's Abode at Mt. Youtai. Telling the "story of her story" leads each of the essayists to insights about her own approach to studying narratives and to a deeper, often surprising, understanding of the power of imagination.

Contributors are Deyonne Bryant, Minjie Chen, Cindy L. Christiansen, Beverly Lyon Clark, Karen Coats, Wendy Doniger, Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Betsy Hearne, Joanna Hearne, Ann Hendricks, Rania Huntington, Christine Jenkins, Kimberly Lau, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Maria Tatar, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Roberta Seelinger Trites, Claudia Quintero Ulloa, and Ofelia Zepeda.

And here's the table of contents:

Introduction ix
Roberta Seelinger Trites
and Betsy Hearne 

Part 1. Finding the Compass

1. The Tea Fragrance Chamber 1
Rania Huntington
2. Academic Grief: Journeys with Little Women 8
Roberta Seelinger Trites
3. Girl: Stories on the Way to Feminism 19
Kimberly J. Lau
4. A Language Journey 31
Ofelia Zepeda
5. A Thousand and One Tales 39
Maria Tatar
6. A Passage to, and from, India 47
Wendy Doniger

Part 2. Literary and Critical Directions

7. Balancing on Interpretive Fences or
Leaping into the Void: Reconciling Myself
with Castaneda and The Teachings of Don Juan 57
Bonnie Glass-Coffin
8. Wet Work and Dry Work:
Notes from a Lacanian Mother 68
Karen Coats
9. The Pleasures of Dreaming:
How L. M. Montgomery Shaped My Lifeworlds 80
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
10. Her Story and History: Journeys
with Laura Ingalls Wilder 96
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg
11. A Moral Compass: Dorothy Sterling’s Mary Jane 102
Deyonne Bryant
12. Uniquely Qualified 115
Ann Hendricks

Part 3. Escaping Home, Finding Home

13. Wondering with Alice 125
Beverly Lyon Clark
14. Romancing the Muse of History:
The Secret Garden, Mary Lennox, and Me 131
Christine a. Jenkins
15. The Ghost in the Borrowed Story:
A Mystery in Twenty Chapters 141
Cindy L. Christiansen
16. Generations of Melodrama: A Cinderella Story 156
Claudia Quintero Ulloa
17. My Journey Home 170
Minjie Chen
18. Birth Maps 180
Joanna Hearne
19. Bringing the Story Home:
A Journey with Beauty and the Beast 194
Betsy Hearne

Contributors 213
Index 217

So, yes, definitely a wonderful mix of personal essays about the impact of some of the most beloved literature of women. We get Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Hans Christian Andersen for the fairy tale fans.  We also get L. M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables and company), Little Women, Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Secret Garden, Nancy Drew, Alice in Wonderland and some lesser known favorites. Many of the same books that defined my own childhood and adolescent reading.

To supplement the book, a website was built for readers to contribute their own stories, but there doesn't seem to have been much traffic to it, only a few stories submitted.  Mostly there is just book promotion there, most of which I have summed up here.  Anyway, the reviews have been positive and the excerpts I've read from browsing through Look Inside on Amazon and the book website are quite promising.  Once I'm finished with Cinderella Tales, I think this will find a way to my house as a gift to myself...

Holiday Book: The Star Child by the Grimms

The Star Child by the Grimms and illustrated by Bernadette Watts was released in October, a reprint of a book first published several years ago and long out of print. It makes a great holiday book.

Book description from the publisher:

There was once a young girl whose only possessions were the clothes on her back and a piece of bread some kind soul had given to her. But even these few things meant much to others less fortunate than herself, and in selfless love, the girl gave the little she had away. In this beautiful Grimm tale, her virtue is rewarded a thousand times over.

The tale is also available for reading on SurLaLune as The Star-Money but you don't get Watts' beautiful illustrations, of course.  That cover alone is worth the price of admission.
 
Watts has several other fairy tale retellings including: