Beauty and the Beast Book Sculpture by Raidersofthelostart

I discovered this through Tales of Faerie despite my best intentions to scout through Etsy for more wonderful fairy tale finds. (But I haven't had the time of late!). Raidersofthelostart has transformed a vintage Beauty and the Beast book into a sculpture. Lovely.

From the seller:

Beauty and the Beast and other stories is a antique book, altered, and preserved in a Plexiglas special designed museum quality case .

The book was published in 1879 as a illustration book and was rescued hand carved into an exquisite piece of art. The book like all books I use, needed repair and was was in unsatisfactory condition, altering took much care.

The book is 9x7 inches and filled with lovely illustrations from a time gone by. The illustrations were hand picked and carved to stand up inside the book. No pages were removed from the final piece.

Beauty and the Beast comes with a glass display box 14x12x8 and gives an exquisite look to the final product. a black stand is included to display the book inside the case.

Special care will be taken for delivery to insure it arrives to your home.

A lovely original one of kind display for any home.

Topsy Turvy Doll Mermaid

Topsy Turvy Doll Mermaid

I've shared my love for topsy turvy dolls in the past--way before most of you became readers actually. I think these make fun toys, but they make great storytelling devices if used well, too, which in turn makes them more exciting toys for the kids. This one obviously goes best with Andersen's Little Mermaid.

Ebook Release: Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World

 

Two book images today? Why, yes. Yesterday marked the appearance of Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World as an ebook. It is also available at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de.

And, in case you missed it, the "Look Inside" feature is now available on Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World's paper version. You can peruse the titles (at least a limited number of pages) and see the book's layout as well as it's index.

The formatting for these has been a beast and I hope they read well on your eReaders. An epub version with BN is in the works, too. Are there any Nook readers out there in SurLaLune land? And are there any other formats that you readers would be interested in?

And, yes, an ebook of Bluebeard is in the works as well as the possibilities of Sleeping Beauties and Twelve Dancing Princesses, although the latter didn't have e-publishing rights for a few of the tales so it will be an abridged version of the book.

Fairytale Reflections (27) Joanne Harris

 

   

Last Friday Katherine shared Fairytale Reflections (27) Joanne Harris at SMoST. Here in the U.S. Harris is best known for her novel, Chocolat, which inspired the film of the same name. She also wrote Runemarks which was a fantasy for young readers that was well reviewed, too. (The paperback is bargain priced on Amazon right now if you are interested in it. It is a completely different cover from the original release.) Katherine discusses it Runemarks in her introduction and it makes a great introduction to Harris's guest post about the Pied Piper of Hamelin, that tale which resonates with so many children and adults.

Here are the first few paragraphs. Click through to read the entire entry, especially if you are enthralled by that tale yourself:

Raised as I was on the darkest, grimmest of Grimm’s fairy tales, I’ve always been very much aware of the dual nature of the world depicted in folklore and story. For every happy ending, there is an equally tragic one; children left to die in the woods; lovers parted forever; villains with their eyes pecked out by crows, or burnt alive; or hanged. Fairytale is a world away from the comfortable assurances of the Disney franchise – and surely that was the purpose of those original fairy tales, devised as they were for an audience comprising mostly of adults; often very poor; people whose lives were cruel and harsh, and who would never – even in fiction - have accepted to believe in a world in which the shadows did not at least occasionally rival the light.

My favourite of these ambiguous tales was always the Pied Piper. It’s interesting that this very well-known story has never been softened and sweetened in the way in which, for instance, The Little Mermaid, or Sleeping Beauty, or Cinderella have been adapted to suit our more sensitive times and cultures. Perhaps because the main character is such a sinister figure, nameless, appearing from nowhere, then vanishing into nowhere again, leaving nothing but unanswered questions and a story that lingers uncomfortably without a happy ending. But the ambiguity and the unanswered questions are part of my fondness for this tale, which seems to me to sum up perfectly our uncomfortable relationship with the world of magic and story, a relationship that combines longing and fear in fairly equal proportions.

   

Fairytale Reflections (26) Pauline Fisk

   

I failed to get a link up to Fairytale Reflections (26) Pauline Fisk at SMoST last week so here we are! As much as I love reading about the fairy tale aspects of these posts, I also love learning about so many authors who are relatively unknown here in the U.S. That is one of my greater hopes for ebooks--the relative ease of getting international distribution of books. As always, Katherine provides a wonderful introduction to Fisk's work and then steps aside for Fisk's contribution.

This time Pauline Fisk writes about Wild Edric in her guest post. Here are the first few paragraphs. As always click through to read it all:

WILD EDRIC (and me)


My whole life has been spent trying to bring together ‘real life’ and the world of fantasy, in particular by finding new and interesting ways of expressing a sense of the magical in my writing. Ever since I was five years old, hunting down fairies in the back alley behind my parents’ house, a sense of more to life than meets the eye has been part of who I am. When I was a child, life was one big fairy tale. That was how I felt. But how to get into that fairy tale? How to make that fairy tale my life, and make it real and be a part of it?

It was through stories that I found the way. I couldn’t write when I was five years old, but I could make up stories and that was what I did, standing at the garden fence, telling them out loud to the big children in the house next door, lined up on their side of the fence asking, ‘What happened next?’ But those stories, made up off the top of my head, were ephemeral. They were fly-by-nights, whereas words on paper had a strange new durability which I discovered when I learnt to write. Describing Winnie the Pooh hunting honey made me part of the story. Adventuring with the Famous Five turned them into a Famous Six. I made those things my own, and I made them real - and simply by writing about them.