Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves
collected and edited: Jack Zipes
ISBN: 0415901405
Read June 18-22, 2016
An interesting collection of mostly lesser or unknown fairy tales by prominent Victorian authors (here meaning authors who were prominent in Victorian times, although most are unknown now). There are a few "known" tales sprinkled into the mix, and a few author names which are recognizable, even if the particular story is unknown. A few notable stories that I knew from before reading this collection: Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon, and Jean Ingelow's The Prince's Dream. Notable authors that people might recognize are: Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, George MacDonald, Andrew Lang (of color fairy book fame) and Edith Nesbit, and Rudyard Kipling. I was thrilled to discover that so many of these favorite authors had written interesting (if not particularly always GOOD) fairy tales.
So what do we have here? A collection, with preface notes for each story (!) As a side note, I love a good preface note so very much - it adds so much to understanding and to context, and to placing the author and story into a framework to see why and how they did what they did. 22 fairy tales in all, from writers who were popular or well-regarded or at least prolific during the Victorian times, writing for children instead of adults, and MOSTLY not writing solely with a particular moral or societal axe to grind, but instead creating stories to entertain rather than to educate. Many of the stories also include the original artworks for covers or interior drawings, and those are less interesting to me, but nice to see included and replicated for art-lovers or scholars.
This was really fun, dense reading, and I deeply enjoyed it. More of most of these author's works can be found on Project Gutenberg or on Google Books, having been many years out of print and out of copyright.
Story summaries and thoughts;
1) Uncle David's Nonsensical Story about Giants and Fairies, by Catherine Sinclair.
Moralistic story of a lazy boy in the vein of Pilgrim's Progress, with a set of good and bad fairies and a boy-eating giant who just loves fat lazy boy for dinner. A happy ending that reinforces the value (and joy) in good clean fun and effort.
Very much like a Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Tale: treacly and mealy-mouthed and insufferably perfectly good boys and terribly bad lazy boys. The fairies and giant are an interesting touch, but could be easiily substituted with any sort of plot device without any changes necessary.
2) King of the Golden River/The Black Brothers, by John Ruskin
A hidden magical valley has beautiful weather until the landowning two brothers mistreat and abuse the visiting god of the winds one night. The youngest brother tries to intervene, but is beaten for his troubles. The winds then change and the valley withers, so the brothers head to the big city to swindle people there, taking work as cheating goldsmiths. When they are facing starvation, the youngest brother is forced to melt down his only prized possession: a gold cup bearing the face of a dwarf, but instead of gold, an actual dwarf emerges, and claims to be the king of the river in their original valley, and that anyone who reaches the spring at the top of the mountain with "holy water" will have unending riches and the valley will prosper again, but anyone who fails will be turned to a black rock. Obvs the older nasty brothers steal the birthright but they each fail in turn, and the younger thinks he fails because he squanders the holy water on the weak and suffering beings beside the river on the way up. But all is good, because charity is great or something, and everything ends beautifully (but they left the brothers to rot as stones - yay!)
This was a very interesting multi-part story, with complex fairy-tale underpinnings and a real sense of adventure and far-away-lands, and despite a bit of heavy-handed christlike suffering imagery at the end, it was a fun romp and a really great story. I would be shocked if no one had made it into a longer fantasy story - I'd like to do it myself.
3) Cinderella and the Glass Slipper, by George Cruikshank
Moralizing story where the stepmother is a gambler, and Cinderella's fairy godmother is a little person (referred to as a dwarf in the text) who is an anti-drink campaigner, who lectures the King himself about the refreshments to be served at the wedding reception.
Oh. My. God. Would have been funnier if it hadn't been so deadly earnest. What's funny is that the story troupes along with only the odd little side-light or comment to show the author is a dead bore and a kill-joy, UNTIL we get to the end, and fall straight into the rabbit hole where this dead-serious little person basically lays into the poor unsuspecting King, going on for almost a WHOLE page out of a roughly 12-page story, and entirely killing the pace and fun of the ending.
4) Heinrich/The Love of Gold, by Alfred Crowquill (best pseudonym ever for Alfred Henry Forrester)
Our main dude is a super-talented stonemason, but he doesn't love his work, he's just a work-a-holic with technical genius. He's hard at work late one evening and his just-finished gargoyle starts talking to him, and tells him the secret to gaining nearly limitless gold. Heinrich is all for it, and spends forver mining and digging and piling up gold - never thinking about the time he spends. He finally comes up for air and drops in on the gargoyle, who tells him he's a dumbshit and his whole life has gone by, and he goes and lives like a hermit in the mountains for a few weeks before he kicks it.
Interesting variant on the "don't waste your life" theme like the one seen in Golden Threads (the boy who gets the magic ball of his life's thread that he can pull out to make time pass quickly), but I was amused that the guy gets a few weeks of life to be a crazy holy hermit before he dies, so he can leave his greedy gold to the church as is only proper.
5) Bruno's Revenge, Lewis Carroll (from an earlier drafted version)
The author goes for a walk at a friend's manor fields, and interacts with a young fairy boy who is dissuaded from pulling a mean prank on his older sister for revenge.
Very quirky (as appropriate for Carroll, I suppose) and lighthearted and grounded - very much in the feel of Doctor Dolittle.
6) The Magic Fishbone, Charles Dickens
A king is given a magic fishbone to give to his daughter, who "will know when to use it" but keeps holding out despite many exaggerated difficulties. This is a short and very childlike and almost stream-of-consciousness or dream-like story, where the logic of adults is subverted and the child is the clever and conquering hero.
I really like this story, and the odd unsettling childish nature of the telling and the plot development. Very peculiar and quite individual. Extremely unlike his long work.
7) Cinderella, Anne Isabella Ritchie
Cinderella as a Regency romance, complete with foppish but sweet Prince Charming, and a delightfully vicious stepmother, and a neighboring Lady who acts the Godmother role with relish and an all-seeing eye.
Not particularly memorable, but a sweet homage to Cinderella in the vein of a classic Victorian romance, with all the mores and social climbing and details of dress and fashion that entail.
8) The Ogre Courting, Juliana Horatia Ewing
A nasty ogre lives as a local landowner, with a particularly nasty penchant for marrying beautiful young women and then having them mysteriously die within months or weeks. He sets his cap for Managing Molly, but she's more than a match for him, and manages him within an inch of his life.
LOVE this story. The only way it would be better is if it were called Managing Molly, and I'd like it a lot better. This one is really begging to be made into a picture book.
9) The Prince's Dream, Jean Ingelow
A young sheltered prince lives in a high tower room in the center of a great desert - all he knows are Bedouin and the herds they keep, until a stranger arrives for a brief stay and confirms for the Prince all the stories he's heard from the servants about Labour and Liberty and Gold.
A bit too allegorical for my tastes, but well-drawn, a fantasical Aladdin setting and with a light touch overall.
10) Charlie Among the Elves, Edward H. Knatchbull-Hugessen (what a name)
A slight story about a boy who takes a tumble down hill and is "captured" by the fair folk and spends an afternoon with them observing their amusements.
This one was unsettling, because all of the fair folk are in their more adult aspect, and the child has no agency or really character at all - he just sits and listens and watches, not allowed to participate or to comment by the adults. A very peculiar and slightly offputting story, with overtones of child-snatching and grooming behaviors.
11) A Toy Princess, Mary de Morgan
A solid fairy tale about a country where manners dictated no opinions or emotions to be shown, where the lovely sweet princess baby was replaced with an automaton by a kind fairy, who offers to reverse the switch when the girl reaches her majority, but the court and kingdom are stunned and disgusted with this open-hearted emotional and opinionated actual girl, and prefer to crown the automaton (with only a few mealy-mouthed stock phrases) as their ruler instead.
Saucy and sharp and beautifully crafted and neatly plotted and paced. A really excellent story, and I went onto Gutenberg to find some of her other works, and found them nearly as fine and enjoyable. Another good candidate for a good juvenile fantasy adaptation or a picture book.
12) The Day Boy and the Night Girl, George MacDonald
A witch finds and lures two pregnant ladies to her castle, and treats one to a sunny life and another to a shadowy night existence, then steals their infants after birth and sends one lady packing (the other one dies). The witch continues this regimen of night and day existence for the two children - the boy Photogen only knows of the day, and the girl Nycteris only knows of the night, until she grows ill and the children get old enough to start figuring things out on their own. They discover the opposite time, and are made frightened or weak because of it, but despite that, they work together to conquer the witch.
This is a freaking seriously amazing fairy tale, and I loved it unabashedly and wholeheartedly. I want to write something like this myself someday. It is beautiful and classic and delightful and perfect. The best out story out of the collection, by miles, and also one of the longer ones - 31 pages.
13) All My Doing - or Red Riding Hood All Over Again, Harriet Louisa Childe-Pemberton
Moralistic re-telling of Red Riding Hood set as a Victorian-era thriller/psychological horror story of a con man taking advantage of a naive child to sneak into and rob a rich manor house, nearly killing the grandmother and the girl's suitor.
Hoooooy boy does this lay the Victorian girl guilt on thick. This is some serious Uncle Arthur victim blaming bullshit here, and despite the fun trappings of a carefree girl being stalked and conned by a ruthless villain, the fun of the story is sucked right out by the militaristic insistence on feeling guilt and internalizing a sense of "female self-deprecation." Even with all of that leading up to the ending, the hand-wringing 'everything is ruined forever and it's all my fault' melodrama of the framing story and the narrator's coda left a nasty taste in my mouth.
14) Princess Nobody, Andrew Lang
A version of the classic "fetch the princess" quest tale, with the Prince a devoted but ugly person who is changed to become beautiful himself by fairy magic, and the princess basically a plot-point to allow the Prince to wander and suffer and encounter magical lands.
Eh. Very similar to many other stories where the hero has to find the macguffin. The pacing was also veeeeery draggy. I felt a little left down by my beloved Color Fairy Book collector.
15) The Story of a King's Daughter, Mary Louisa Molesworth
A beautiful and kind-hearted princess cannot bear cruelty or unkindness, even to animals, and she spurns her betrothed husband when he injures a castle dog. He is untouched by her strength of character until he is abducted into the enchanted forest, and turned into a ravening beast until an even dozen forest animals are willing to rest on his back while he carries them from the woods. Obvs the princess and her forest friends are the ones to do this, and he sufficiently repents and is redeemed by her character and her forgiveness.
A VERY unfortunately named princess: Aureole. Eeek. Also a nasty bit of commentary about how she's not willing to be the queen because she's a woman and that's obvs not a woman's place. Sigh. Other than that, I'm willing to believe the change of heart of the suitor because it's given time and foreshadowed, and it's nice to have the princess doing the saving every once in a while.
16) The Happy Prince, Oscar Wilde
A gilded and be-jeweled statue of a prince sits in the middle of town, broken-hearted because he can see the needs of the poor and suffering, but can't do anything to help them. A sparrow stops by on his migration, and at the Prince's request, begins despoiling the statue to provide gems and gold to the needy people. The prince is rendered leaden and and bird freezes to death, and they get tossed in the rubbish by the city leadership.
Wilde and Hans Christian Andersen are horrid people who make me cry all the time, and I deeply resent the heavy-handed symbolism and heart-tugging. It makes the stories seem cheap and artificial and trying too hard, and I'm not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to a story that purposefully and pedantically sets out to make me sad.
17) Wooden Tony, Lucy Lane Clifford
A couple in the Alps has a strange son who wanders about and makes odd whistles and music, but can't be bothered to work, or even to study or to learn anything. His father is a wood-carver, and hates him for being worthless and different, but his mother loves him and defends him as best she can. A traveling peddler stops by and offers to take the boy to the city and see if he can make a sensation of him with his odd music, but the man magically steals the song, and slowly turns the boy to wood and shrinks him down, and puts him into a cuckoo clock with one of his father's carvings. the story ends with his parents looking at him inside the clock, and knowing it is their son, but being unable to prove it or to save him.
This is like Victorian R. L. Stine craziness here. This is amazing horror, and a great creeping pace to it as you try and figure out where the story is going and what's going to happen to poor unfortunate Tony. I don't like the casual ableism - it's very easy to read Tony as being mentally handicapped, or having a processing disorder, and no one is willing to work with him, and people are very willing to take advantage of him or get rid of him, but it works for the story and is a very modern mindset to apply here. Still - a really great tale, and excellent atmosphere.
18) The Potted Princess, Rudyard Kipling
A clever Jack tale of a task set to rescue the princess from a pot, and all the emirs and sultans and rajas and princes learn arcane and powerful magics from the far ends of the earth in vain, and a potter's son walks up and just opens the pot. No magic - she was just in a pot.
This was funny and cute and slight, and the framing story was almost as funny.
19) The Rooted Lover, Laurence Housman
A gardener sees the princess and falls in love, and asks a local witch for help. She turns him into a fiery poppy and plants him in the princess's garden - if she picks him and wears him next to her heart, she'll fall in love with him and he'll be re-born as a man, but if not, he'll die when the flower dies at the end of the season. After many trials and an opposing suitor, the long-suffering poppy boy is rewarded at last when the princess sacrifices wealth and position to find and be with her dark-eyed red-haired dream lover.
An interesting twist where the boy becomes the flower, and a nice happy ending after lots of trials and suffering on each side, but I still don't like the "love spell" nature of the relationship. Would be interesting to try and adapt for a non mind-controlled version.
20) The Reluctant Dragon, Kenneth Grahame
A posh dragon, a very educated (but fight-loving) young boy, and Sir George all converge on the English countryside for a battle that ends up being entirely pro-forma, but none the less enjoyable.
I like this story more for the wry tones and asides and snarky commentary, but the basic story is cute and fun.
21) The Last of the Dragons, Edith Nesbit
A very emancipated princess and a reluctant knight make their way to the cave of the last dragon to entice it out with biscuits instead of her being forced to be captured and freed. Very much in the vein of Wrede's Dealing with Dragons concept, meshed with the Serendipity book The Muffin Dragon.
Cute and light.
22) The Spell of the Magician's Daughter, Evelyn Sharp
A fiesty magician's child daughter doesn't want to be a magician - she doesn't even study her spells, but she DOES want to be a princess. When she sees the young prince out in the woods, he's searching for the perfect princess, and she sets him up with a quest - creating a magic spell of course. Naturally because it's her first spell, she's got to go ahead of him and make sure everything's properly set up for him, so she travels the world with her wits and her cleverness, all the time he is following after the trail she's setting up. They finally meet at the end of the world, and they're all grown up, and quite fond of each other after their quasi-shared questing experience.
A really interesting story, and my second favorite after the MacDonald masterpiece. This one is more straightforward, but I really liked her fond telling of the characters, and the reveal of how they're all grown up now.
Showing posts with label storytelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storytelling. Show all posts
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Monday, June 20, 2016
Nonfiction: TED Talks, Chris Anderson
TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking
Chris Anderson
ISBN: 9780544634497
Chatty and informative, with lots of tips and no hard rules.
Chris Anderson
ISBN: 9780544634497
Chatty and informative, with lots of tips and no hard rules.
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Fairy Tales: Magic Fairy Stories From Many Lands, Susan Taylor & Severino Baraldi
Magic Fairy Stories From Many Lands
Susan Taylor, illustrated by Severino Baraldi
ISBN: 0831757329 (Gallery Books, 1974)
A set of lesser-known fairy stories and folk tales with delightful classic-style illustrations throughout.
Baraldi's illustrations are beautiful and evocative; they remind me of the classic Dean's fairy tale illustrations, but these are a little more sinister and a bit more expressive, and also more representative of people of color or ancestry not in the classic northern european fairy tale mould.
Story summaries and comments below.
Foolish Frances: A variant of the Fisherman and his Wife story, where Mrs Luck tries to find someone who only wants something minor - someone who is mainly content and happy with their life so far. Mrs Luck finds Frances, who lives happily in a mud hut, and after some coaxing from Mrs Luck, after several demurrals, then wishes for a little cat to keep her company. Then of course she realizes she needs a goat to provide milk for the cat, and maybe a goat-shed, then a cow, then some hens, then she realizes she'd love to dance, but her dresses aren't good enough, and really she needs help with her hair also, and furthermore other people dance better than she does, and really she ought to have a big beautiful house to go with her beautiful hair and dresses, and won't Mrs Luck call her Madame Mayor now that she's hooked the leader of the town into marriage? The now-miffed Mrs Luck retracts all of the gifts, except the little cat, and that is why Lady Luck is so fickle and bad-tempered.
I would have liked this story a whole lot better if Frances had been the sort of "naive clever" rustic who shows the meddling Mrs Luck that bothering people with extra things when they've insisted they're perfectly happy is perhaps not helpful - as it is, it's too much of a Fisherman's Wife for me to really think much of it.
The Rich and Poor Widow (I also know it as Barren Wheat and as Why Sea Grass Grows): A haughty wealthy widow runs her husband's shipping company brilliantly with her business acumen, but her heart is cold and her soul is barren. During a famine, she and the other wealthy compete to find and display the most beautiful treasures of the world. A kind and loving sea captain (who is sweet on the widow, but she's spurned him) brings back a ship full of wheat to feed the hungry, arguing that charity and kindness is the greatest treasure, and that she would be beloved and blessed if she were to feed the wheat to the people of the city. She is unmoved, and dumps the wheat over the side of the ship into the sea. The famine worsens, everyone hates her, and she loses all her wealth and business. That summer, the dunes by the sea all grow what looks like wheat, but it's barren and inedible. Eventually the widow is reduced to gleaning in the fields, and she is humbled and kind. She's rescued by the kind captain, who is now wealthy and land-owning.
An interesting combination of the hauteur from Beauty and the Beast with the gleaning motif from the Book of Ruth in the Bible. I wish the widow had learned to be kind without having been reduced to starvation first, but that's fairy tales for you.
The Elf Boy: A barren woman and her farmer husband are given a half-elven child to raise, but the woman can't keep up with all the conditions laid upon her, especially to keep the elven rose water out of her eyes so she can't see fairy. The child is taken back, but he pines, so the woman is stolen away to be with him in fairy, until she's caught reciting the Lord's Prayer over him. When the child himself begins murmuring the prayer, he's reverted to fully human, and the child and woman are returned to the farm and to normal Christian life.
I'd really love to figure out a way to work this out so that the Christian overtones weren't necessary. I love the idea of a fae community realizing that a half-human child would need human parenting, but that the parents can't keep up with the strictures and the child has to eventually choose to be human or elven.
The Forest Prince (I know it also as The Wild Prince and The Royal Woodsman): A prince suffers a hunting accident and goes slightly mad in the woods as a result, before the "wild man" is then captured and placed in a cage on display in a neighboring King's garden. Pleas about his identity and his humanity are ignored, and the Prince finally bribes the Princess to release him by holding her golden ball hostage. When the King chases the escaped Prince, the Prince captures the King and keeps HIM in a cage until he grows matted and wild. The Prince tells the King that he'll only free him if the Princess marries the Wild Woodsman who was caged before (the King doesn't realize that his captor the Prince IS the Wild Woodsman). The Prince and Princess meet, the Prince passes a set of marriage tests with the help of the forest creatures he befriended in the woods and in the cage, and the King is set free, and the two royals marry.
A classic based on old tales of the knights of the round table, and other fables of wild men or hermits in the woods who are secretly royalty in disguise for various reasons. I like that the Prince is somewhat vindictive, but I wish the Princess had a bit more agency or time to fall in love.
The Rain Woman: A pair of young lovers and an older wise woman travel to the center of the earth during a drought to waken the Rain Woman to keep the land from burning under the attentions of the rampant Fire Man, after the boy's father refuses to let the pair wed unless the girl proves herself first.
This one is new to me, and I really liked it. I liked that the girl was the one who had to waken the Rain Woman, and that the boy helped her as best he could, and that the parents were reasonable and kept their promises, and I even liked the dichotomy of the Fire Man and Rain Woman, and the little Rumplestiltskin-esque trickery going on to find out the secret of where the Rain Woman was buried away.
The Glass Box: A sweet farm girl marries the Prince, and subsequently becomes Queen. Her two older sisters are bitter and jealous, and when the Queen delivers children, they steal them away and replace them with dogs and cats. The town and the King accuse the Queen of witchcraft, so she seeks the assistance of a wise woman and a sacred bird to prove her innocence and to find her children, using a glass compass to find her way to a valley where if you turn back, you're turned to stone. Of course she turns back. Then we skip to her children, who, after the deaths of their kind and good foster parents, are determined to find their parents, with the help of a wise woman and a sacred bird, led by a set of glass compasses. The boys in sequence fail, but the youngest girl (with a gold star on her forehead if you haven't figured it out by now) overcomes the trials and sets free her brothers, her mother the Queen, and a whole army of other idiots who turned around in the valley before getting to the bird. The bird confirms everything, and the army heads back to keep the King from marrying the Queen's nasty older sister.
This is a little bit of a "everything but the kitchen sink" sort of tale, but it was fun and the odd detail of replacing the babies with dogs and cats (that were then treated and raised like royalty) was interesting, as is the idea of a clear glass compass.
The Three Oranges: a trio of brothers goes to a wise woman to learn their fortunes. She asks them what they most desire - the first wants a beautiful wife, the second a rich one, and the third, simply someone he would love, and who would love him. The wise woman tells them of a far-away castle with an orange tree with three ripe oranges. If they can retrieve the three oranges all together, without hurting the tree, all will be well and they'll have their heart's desire. Sadly, the brothers are all idiots or incompetent. They split up, hurt the tree, and fail to harvest the oranges, until the youngest brother, who does pick them, but only by tearing off the whole branch. Then the elder two brothers eat all their rations on the way home, and tear open the oranges in their hunger, and have nothing to offer the beautiful rich ladies who appear before them. The younger brother saves his, and feeds his new wife. Sadly, because he broke the branch, the wise woman has to punish him, and pricks his wife with a needle and turns her into a bird until the dumb man's mother figures out that the bird has a needle in it's neck. Then they go rescue the other brothers, and somehow despite their incompetence and stupidity, they also get the wives they were after.
A beautiful fairy-tale rendition of how life isn't fair, nor sensible. The visuals of the ripe oranges are arresting, but the tale itself is a bit muddled and has lots of stuff going on, from the clever youngest brother trope to the beautiful woman disguised as fruit or baubles.
Mrs Luck and Mr Money: a really long and frankly not very interesting morality contest between Luck and Money as to which one is really needed more, and which one is more important. The two are married, and trying to decide who will be the boss of the marriage, so they torment this poor farmer with a horrible life until he's destitute, then offer him assistance to see which helps him the most.
Not a fan.
The Magic Thread: seen this one in lots of places. A bright boy is given a magic ball with a gold thread peeking out of a hole in the side. The thread represents his life, and he can pull the thread out to make time pass more quickly for him. He (of course) pulls the thread to escape boredom and pain and anticipation and things desired but delayed, or wars or illnesses, until he's very old and realizes that he's missed most of the life that other people have. The ending has the man asking for the gift to be taken away, and he wakes again as a young boy with his whole life ahead of him again.
Another strongly moral offering, but still fun to see what the boy chooses to skip in life.
The Prince's Pilgrimage: another new one for me. A Queen is desperate for a son, and promises the (always unnamed yet capitalized) Holy Saint that the kid will do a year-long pilgrimage on his 18th birthday if she has a child. 18 years later, Prince is setting off on his pilgrimage, and mom offers him wise advise for finding a traveling buddy. A good friend is found, and the two are inseparable and loyal to each other, even when faced with the temptations of a meddling King who wants the Prince for a son-in-law. At the culmination of the journey, the friend is supposed dead, but the Prince personally carries the body to the shrine of the Holy Saint and the friend revives. The final test comes when, after marrying the Princess, the friend is sick unto death (caused by the King-in-law) and the Prince has to sacrifice his infant daughter to save his friend. He does so, and the Holy Saint appears and resurrects the child, blessing the parents for their loyalty to their friend.
HOLY GAY SUBTEXT BATMAN! Yeahhhhh, so about that close bosom friendship there.
Susan Taylor, illustrated by Severino Baraldi
ISBN: 0831757329 (Gallery Books, 1974)
A set of lesser-known fairy stories and folk tales with delightful classic-style illustrations throughout.
Baraldi's illustrations are beautiful and evocative; they remind me of the classic Dean's fairy tale illustrations, but these are a little more sinister and a bit more expressive, and also more representative of people of color or ancestry not in the classic northern european fairy tale mould.
Story summaries and comments below.
Foolish Frances: A variant of the Fisherman and his Wife story, where Mrs Luck tries to find someone who only wants something minor - someone who is mainly content and happy with their life so far. Mrs Luck finds Frances, who lives happily in a mud hut, and after some coaxing from Mrs Luck, after several demurrals, then wishes for a little cat to keep her company. Then of course she realizes she needs a goat to provide milk for the cat, and maybe a goat-shed, then a cow, then some hens, then she realizes she'd love to dance, but her dresses aren't good enough, and really she needs help with her hair also, and furthermore other people dance better than she does, and really she ought to have a big beautiful house to go with her beautiful hair and dresses, and won't Mrs Luck call her Madame Mayor now that she's hooked the leader of the town into marriage? The now-miffed Mrs Luck retracts all of the gifts, except the little cat, and that is why Lady Luck is so fickle and bad-tempered.
I would have liked this story a whole lot better if Frances had been the sort of "naive clever" rustic who shows the meddling Mrs Luck that bothering people with extra things when they've insisted they're perfectly happy is perhaps not helpful - as it is, it's too much of a Fisherman's Wife for me to really think much of it.
The Rich and Poor Widow (I also know it as Barren Wheat and as Why Sea Grass Grows): A haughty wealthy widow runs her husband's shipping company brilliantly with her business acumen, but her heart is cold and her soul is barren. During a famine, she and the other wealthy compete to find and display the most beautiful treasures of the world. A kind and loving sea captain (who is sweet on the widow, but she's spurned him) brings back a ship full of wheat to feed the hungry, arguing that charity and kindness is the greatest treasure, and that she would be beloved and blessed if she were to feed the wheat to the people of the city. She is unmoved, and dumps the wheat over the side of the ship into the sea. The famine worsens, everyone hates her, and she loses all her wealth and business. That summer, the dunes by the sea all grow what looks like wheat, but it's barren and inedible. Eventually the widow is reduced to gleaning in the fields, and she is humbled and kind. She's rescued by the kind captain, who is now wealthy and land-owning.
An interesting combination of the hauteur from Beauty and the Beast with the gleaning motif from the Book of Ruth in the Bible. I wish the widow had learned to be kind without having been reduced to starvation first, but that's fairy tales for you.
The Elf Boy: A barren woman and her farmer husband are given a half-elven child to raise, but the woman can't keep up with all the conditions laid upon her, especially to keep the elven rose water out of her eyes so she can't see fairy. The child is taken back, but he pines, so the woman is stolen away to be with him in fairy, until she's caught reciting the Lord's Prayer over him. When the child himself begins murmuring the prayer, he's reverted to fully human, and the child and woman are returned to the farm and to normal Christian life.
I'd really love to figure out a way to work this out so that the Christian overtones weren't necessary. I love the idea of a fae community realizing that a half-human child would need human parenting, but that the parents can't keep up with the strictures and the child has to eventually choose to be human or elven.
The Forest Prince (I know it also as The Wild Prince and The Royal Woodsman): A prince suffers a hunting accident and goes slightly mad in the woods as a result, before the "wild man" is then captured and placed in a cage on display in a neighboring King's garden. Pleas about his identity and his humanity are ignored, and the Prince finally bribes the Princess to release him by holding her golden ball hostage. When the King chases the escaped Prince, the Prince captures the King and keeps HIM in a cage until he grows matted and wild. The Prince tells the King that he'll only free him if the Princess marries the Wild Woodsman who was caged before (the King doesn't realize that his captor the Prince IS the Wild Woodsman). The Prince and Princess meet, the Prince passes a set of marriage tests with the help of the forest creatures he befriended in the woods and in the cage, and the King is set free, and the two royals marry.
A classic based on old tales of the knights of the round table, and other fables of wild men or hermits in the woods who are secretly royalty in disguise for various reasons. I like that the Prince is somewhat vindictive, but I wish the Princess had a bit more agency or time to fall in love.
The Rain Woman: A pair of young lovers and an older wise woman travel to the center of the earth during a drought to waken the Rain Woman to keep the land from burning under the attentions of the rampant Fire Man, after the boy's father refuses to let the pair wed unless the girl proves herself first.
This one is new to me, and I really liked it. I liked that the girl was the one who had to waken the Rain Woman, and that the boy helped her as best he could, and that the parents were reasonable and kept their promises, and I even liked the dichotomy of the Fire Man and Rain Woman, and the little Rumplestiltskin-esque trickery going on to find out the secret of where the Rain Woman was buried away.
The Glass Box: A sweet farm girl marries the Prince, and subsequently becomes Queen. Her two older sisters are bitter and jealous, and when the Queen delivers children, they steal them away and replace them with dogs and cats. The town and the King accuse the Queen of witchcraft, so she seeks the assistance of a wise woman and a sacred bird to prove her innocence and to find her children, using a glass compass to find her way to a valley where if you turn back, you're turned to stone. Of course she turns back. Then we skip to her children, who, after the deaths of their kind and good foster parents, are determined to find their parents, with the help of a wise woman and a sacred bird, led by a set of glass compasses. The boys in sequence fail, but the youngest girl (with a gold star on her forehead if you haven't figured it out by now) overcomes the trials and sets free her brothers, her mother the Queen, and a whole army of other idiots who turned around in the valley before getting to the bird. The bird confirms everything, and the army heads back to keep the King from marrying the Queen's nasty older sister.
This is a little bit of a "everything but the kitchen sink" sort of tale, but it was fun and the odd detail of replacing the babies with dogs and cats (that were then treated and raised like royalty) was interesting, as is the idea of a clear glass compass.
The Three Oranges: a trio of brothers goes to a wise woman to learn their fortunes. She asks them what they most desire - the first wants a beautiful wife, the second a rich one, and the third, simply someone he would love, and who would love him. The wise woman tells them of a far-away castle with an orange tree with three ripe oranges. If they can retrieve the three oranges all together, without hurting the tree, all will be well and they'll have their heart's desire. Sadly, the brothers are all idiots or incompetent. They split up, hurt the tree, and fail to harvest the oranges, until the youngest brother, who does pick them, but only by tearing off the whole branch. Then the elder two brothers eat all their rations on the way home, and tear open the oranges in their hunger, and have nothing to offer the beautiful rich ladies who appear before them. The younger brother saves his, and feeds his new wife. Sadly, because he broke the branch, the wise woman has to punish him, and pricks his wife with a needle and turns her into a bird until the dumb man's mother figures out that the bird has a needle in it's neck. Then they go rescue the other brothers, and somehow despite their incompetence and stupidity, they also get the wives they were after.
A beautiful fairy-tale rendition of how life isn't fair, nor sensible. The visuals of the ripe oranges are arresting, but the tale itself is a bit muddled and has lots of stuff going on, from the clever youngest brother trope to the beautiful woman disguised as fruit or baubles.
Mrs Luck and Mr Money: a really long and frankly not very interesting morality contest between Luck and Money as to which one is really needed more, and which one is more important. The two are married, and trying to decide who will be the boss of the marriage, so they torment this poor farmer with a horrible life until he's destitute, then offer him assistance to see which helps him the most.
Not a fan.
The Magic Thread: seen this one in lots of places. A bright boy is given a magic ball with a gold thread peeking out of a hole in the side. The thread represents his life, and he can pull the thread out to make time pass more quickly for him. He (of course) pulls the thread to escape boredom and pain and anticipation and things desired but delayed, or wars or illnesses, until he's very old and realizes that he's missed most of the life that other people have. The ending has the man asking for the gift to be taken away, and he wakes again as a young boy with his whole life ahead of him again.
Another strongly moral offering, but still fun to see what the boy chooses to skip in life.
The Prince's Pilgrimage: another new one for me. A Queen is desperate for a son, and promises the (always unnamed yet capitalized) Holy Saint that the kid will do a year-long pilgrimage on his 18th birthday if she has a child. 18 years later, Prince is setting off on his pilgrimage, and mom offers him wise advise for finding a traveling buddy. A good friend is found, and the two are inseparable and loyal to each other, even when faced with the temptations of a meddling King who wants the Prince for a son-in-law. At the culmination of the journey, the friend is supposed dead, but the Prince personally carries the body to the shrine of the Holy Saint and the friend revives. The final test comes when, after marrying the Princess, the friend is sick unto death (caused by the King-in-law) and the Prince has to sacrifice his infant daughter to save his friend. He does so, and the Holy Saint appears and resurrects the child, blessing the parents for their loyalty to their friend.
HOLY GAY SUBTEXT BATMAN! Yeahhhhh, so about that close bosom friendship there.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Fairy Tales: Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France
Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France
Marie de France, translated by Naomi Lewis, illustrated by Angela Barrett
ISBN: 0670826561
Twelve early-medieval "fairy tales" about knights and maidens and courtly love.
Read April 12, 2016
So these are some of our earliest western fantasy/romance books, y'all. Marie lived and wrote somewhere in the 1160s-1220s, and she wrote (possibly) quite a lot, most likely under the protection and encouragement of the otherwise unlamented Henry (Plantagenet) the Second. We don't know who she was, but these Lais reveal a quick mind, good understanding of narrative convention and of interesting subject matters, and a fairly sharp humor.
So what we've got mainly are stories about courtly love. Usually this is between people who are not married, and what I find interesting here is the utter lack of time spent on moralizing about why and how and when they're wrong and bad for their actions. The affairs are often described to the audience as wrong, and the lovers often endure horrible suffering for their pains, but the people themselves (unless they are villainous) are held up as good ladies and gentlemen throughout, and in many more of the stories than I would have expected, the love affair itself is considered a courtly and acceptable thing: so long as the lovers remained in the bonds of considerate behavior and didn't flout their love in public or try to have their spouses killed off.
I'm also interested in the very mundane and realistic portrayals of life which are interspersed with the obviously fantasical and what we would consider fairy-tale. A good half of the stories have some touch of the fantastic. In Guigemar, we've got a magic boat, a knot and a belt that can only be unfastened by true love's touch, and a magic white hind with antlers (the male deer is the hart, and usually the one with antlers, making this even more interesting). In Bisclavret we've got a werewolf who is a devoted and loyal knight who is the one betrayed, which is all sorts of unusual. Lanval is a Galahad figure who feels no urge to love until he sees (what isn't explicitly stated to be, but cannot be anything but) an elven/faery maiden in the forest. Les Deus Amanz is more like a folktale, but does have a purported magic potion: made by a wise and learned old Duchess no less! Yonec tells of a hostage wife succored (and seduced) by a hawk-knight shapeshifter. And Eliduc has a miraculous Juliet-like death swoon lasting days reversed by the judicious application of magical restorative berries (and the most forgiving and understanding wife EVER).
The stories themselves are very short, and I think they're shorter still in the original verse format. This translation puts them into a more modern "short story" narrative format that makes them feel much like the carefully-constructed "stand-alone" stories that are made from ancient myths and religious narratives; the ones that don't actually stand alone, but were often looked at originally in light of the entire cosmology and literary/religious/cultural tradition that the audiences were familiar with. Likewise here I often get the impression that at least part of the clever commentary is lost to me because I don't know what exactly Marie is skewering, although her skills (and that of the translator) mean that I do know something's up.
It's interesting to read stories that are so good, but from a time when "good stories" required very different things than they do now. It's odd to me that the characters are mainly nonexistent, or are archetypes: the virtuous young girl, the brave and true knight, the good king, the jealous wife... The plots are likewise fundamentally archetypical: the courtly affair, the doomed love (several of those), the restoration of the fortunes of the virtuous, the rewards of constancy in love. Active plotting is likewise off the menu: characters don't often set out to do things, but have things either happen to them, or they're presented as dragged along by the hands of fate - especially in the falling-in-love arena, which is presented as an unstoppable and utterly expected and totally unavoidable progression based on being in the same space as the lovely representative of the opposite gender.
What's really most fascinating is that all those things we're told are necessary for a good story, but here are twelve interesting ones (some admittedly moreso than others, but still) that don't have any of that. What do they have instead? Details in situations, personal grace notes, odd moralistic touches or olive branches towards human nature. Focus on specific core ideals and motivations: love, jealousy, pique, greed, fear. A flair for the dramatic: the procession of ever-more-beautiful pairs of girls to the court as Arthur fumes and the council dithers and poor Lanval suffers in self-inflicted silence. A sense of humor: a wife's bitchy jealous commentary ends her up in a bind of her own making when she talks shit she knows isn't true about twins and adultery. (And perhaps a not so subtle mockery of readers who might also believe that old canard? The barb is pointed enough to withstand the additional targets.)
Anyway; the stories aren't earth-shattering, and for most fairy-tale lovers or romance readers (or anyone who has read the Once and Future King waaaay too many times, these will seem quite familar and enjoyable. Several of them are interesting and niggling enough that I wonder if anyone has taken them as the germ of an actual novel or fantasy. It would be a fitting tribute, I think, to a passionate and talented author from so long ago.
Marie de France, translated by Naomi Lewis, illustrated by Angela Barrett
ISBN: 0670826561
Twelve early-medieval "fairy tales" about knights and maidens and courtly love.
Read April 12, 2016
So these are some of our earliest western fantasy/romance books, y'all. Marie lived and wrote somewhere in the 1160s-1220s, and she wrote (possibly) quite a lot, most likely under the protection and encouragement of the otherwise unlamented Henry (Plantagenet) the Second. We don't know who she was, but these Lais reveal a quick mind, good understanding of narrative convention and of interesting subject matters, and a fairly sharp humor.
So what we've got mainly are stories about courtly love. Usually this is between people who are not married, and what I find interesting here is the utter lack of time spent on moralizing about why and how and when they're wrong and bad for their actions. The affairs are often described to the audience as wrong, and the lovers often endure horrible suffering for their pains, but the people themselves (unless they are villainous) are held up as good ladies and gentlemen throughout, and in many more of the stories than I would have expected, the love affair itself is considered a courtly and acceptable thing: so long as the lovers remained in the bonds of considerate behavior and didn't flout their love in public or try to have their spouses killed off.
I'm also interested in the very mundane and realistic portrayals of life which are interspersed with the obviously fantasical and what we would consider fairy-tale. A good half of the stories have some touch of the fantastic. In Guigemar, we've got a magic boat, a knot and a belt that can only be unfastened by true love's touch, and a magic white hind with antlers (the male deer is the hart, and usually the one with antlers, making this even more interesting). In Bisclavret we've got a werewolf who is a devoted and loyal knight who is the one betrayed, which is all sorts of unusual. Lanval is a Galahad figure who feels no urge to love until he sees (what isn't explicitly stated to be, but cannot be anything but) an elven/faery maiden in the forest. Les Deus Amanz is more like a folktale, but does have a purported magic potion: made by a wise and learned old Duchess no less! Yonec tells of a hostage wife succored (and seduced) by a hawk-knight shapeshifter. And Eliduc has a miraculous Juliet-like death swoon lasting days reversed by the judicious application of magical restorative berries (and the most forgiving and understanding wife EVER).
The stories themselves are very short, and I think they're shorter still in the original verse format. This translation puts them into a more modern "short story" narrative format that makes them feel much like the carefully-constructed "stand-alone" stories that are made from ancient myths and religious narratives; the ones that don't actually stand alone, but were often looked at originally in light of the entire cosmology and literary/religious/cultural tradition that the audiences were familiar with. Likewise here I often get the impression that at least part of the clever commentary is lost to me because I don't know what exactly Marie is skewering, although her skills (and that of the translator) mean that I do know something's up.
It's interesting to read stories that are so good, but from a time when "good stories" required very different things than they do now. It's odd to me that the characters are mainly nonexistent, or are archetypes: the virtuous young girl, the brave and true knight, the good king, the jealous wife... The plots are likewise fundamentally archetypical: the courtly affair, the doomed love (several of those), the restoration of the fortunes of the virtuous, the rewards of constancy in love. Active plotting is likewise off the menu: characters don't often set out to do things, but have things either happen to them, or they're presented as dragged along by the hands of fate - especially in the falling-in-love arena, which is presented as an unstoppable and utterly expected and totally unavoidable progression based on being in the same space as the lovely representative of the opposite gender.
What's really most fascinating is that all those things we're told are necessary for a good story, but here are twelve interesting ones (some admittedly moreso than others, but still) that don't have any of that. What do they have instead? Details in situations, personal grace notes, odd moralistic touches or olive branches towards human nature. Focus on specific core ideals and motivations: love, jealousy, pique, greed, fear. A flair for the dramatic: the procession of ever-more-beautiful pairs of girls to the court as Arthur fumes and the council dithers and poor Lanval suffers in self-inflicted silence. A sense of humor: a wife's bitchy jealous commentary ends her up in a bind of her own making when she talks shit she knows isn't true about twins and adultery. (And perhaps a not so subtle mockery of readers who might also believe that old canard? The barb is pointed enough to withstand the additional targets.)
Anyway; the stories aren't earth-shattering, and for most fairy-tale lovers or romance readers (or anyone who has read the Once and Future King waaaay too many times, these will seem quite familar and enjoyable. Several of them are interesting and niggling enough that I wonder if anyone has taken them as the germ of an actual novel or fantasy. It would be a fitting tribute, I think, to a passionate and talented author from so long ago.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Continuing Education: Reading Picture Books with Children, Megan Dowd Lambert
Reading Picture Books with Children
Megan Dowd Lambert
ISBN: 9781580896627
Nonfiction: a book explaining and extolling the "Whole Book Approach" to presenting picture books.
Lambert assumes the reader is already an experienced teacher, parent, or storytime-giver, and doesn't waste any time rehashing the traditional method of storytime: kids sit quietly, reader reads to emphasize story and narrative (and characters if they're talented/brave enough to do voices), pictures are shown around perfunctorily, the books are finished, the kids stay mostly quiet.
In the Whole Book Approach (a method Lambert developed while working with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art) the narrative is relegated to simply another facet of the whole picture book as a purposefully created entity using multiple disciplines and arts to present a concept and narrative. Here, equal or more focus is given to describing and questioning the art, the book design decisions, and even to choices in typography and page borders. Even more scandalous, this is a discussion-based approach, so not only are the kids supposed to talk, the "storyteller" is actually supposed to interrupt the story on each page and ASK them for their thoughts on what's going on with the art, design, typesetting, and whatever (directed questions, of course). What heresy!
She's really gung-ho about it, and her enthusiasm is infectious, but I do have a few qualms.
Point one: I work with toddlers. No amount of directed questions will forstall the flood of "I have a dog and a mommy and a bedroom and it was my birthday and my gramma is a princess..." stream of consciousness that 4 year olds do so well when presented with any sort of official adult attention. So this is already limited to older kids who can actually process and respond to prompts, and to take at least a little bit of time thinking about what they're seeing before chattering away. She talks about kindergarten groups, but even then I wonder if I could lead them well enough for the process to be coherent.
Point two: If you really dedicate to this, the narrative is going to get shafted, and I do not like that. I LOVE that she wants to focus on the art and design, and to bring attention to what are very much informed and purposeful choices, and to bring kids consciously into an awareness of motifs and memes and conventions that we follow in our culture to signal specific ideas or concepts or moods. All of that is really really great, and SHOULD be taught to kids - BUUUUT... it bothers me that the method to achieve this will totally wreck the flow of a good story. Grrr. I am coming at this from a performative and theatrical background, and really truly this bugs me quite a lot. My personal opinion is that this sort of work should be done with books that the reader and audience already knows extremely well. That way the first encounter with a story is always smooth and presents the story, and does justice to the narrative and pictures being a natural and cohesive unified experience (which is what I THINK most picture book authors and artists want anyway - for the work to just meld seamlessly into this delightful experience that kids love, even if they can't specify why they love it). So, book first as narrative, THEN you go can back in with the post-season analysis and really dig into the why and how and wherefore, with as much discussion and digression and not-ever-finishing-the-actual-book as you like.
Point three: Some people like being all meta about their pleasure activities, and (here's the point where I think Lambert is being a bit more universal than she ought) some people really really don't. And I think those preferences that we have as adults are present as kids. Everyone knows the trope of the annoying TV-watching friend who constantly wants to talk talk talk and overanalyze and overthink every little part of Walking Dead or Game of Thrones - and it's not a positive representation. I hate to think that an overenthusiastic Whole Book Approach during a storytime would turn a kid off of reading because they now associate pleasure reading with that piecemeal and reductive meta-critical approach, and it's not a requirement - simply another way to appreciate and enjoy this particular type of book. And I say this as someone who actually already likes to analyze and critique books and artworks - I just realize that not everyone shares that particular impulse. Not everyone is a book reviewer, and not everyone should be. Not everyone wants to think about critical art theory while they relax, and they shouldn't feel like they have to. And there is the other massive downside here - there's the presenter's opinions on this analytical approach to consider as well. This book is likely to cause a small, quiet revolution in at least some places, and I really feel sorry for any librarians and educators who are forced into this method by decree rather than inclination, or any parents doing this out of a sense of obligation towards their child's development. I feel even MORE sorry for the kids they're presenting to. As much harm could come from an individual kid being not interested in the process, infinitely more harm can come to entire classrooms or groups from a slack or grudging approach by an adult forced into presenting this Approach by a boss or by guilt. I strongly believe that you should only read books that you at least LIKE, because kids are perceptive, and for every book I personally don't like enough to tell (SkippyJon Jones, I'm looking at you) there's other people who LOVE it and can do it justice and be enthusiastic. Please please don't make presenters use a storytime format that they don't intrinsically believe to be valuable or worthwhile - it's just going to backfire.
That was an awful lot of criticism, but those three basic points are really my main hesitations. Lambert presents her points clearly and with beautifully-selected picture-book examples, and explains her reasoning and her methodology rationally. I do support her goals, and I think that her method is fundamentally sound. I don't have any desire to see this format replace or supersede "traditional" storytimes, and despite her enthusiastic proposal of this method, I don't think she really does either. There's a time and a place for reading for uninhibited pleasure and for enjoyable critical analysis, and a perfect program would incorporate both, given by adults passionate about books and reading and children's developing minds.
Megan Dowd Lambert
ISBN: 9781580896627
Nonfiction: a book explaining and extolling the "Whole Book Approach" to presenting picture books.
Lambert assumes the reader is already an experienced teacher, parent, or storytime-giver, and doesn't waste any time rehashing the traditional method of storytime: kids sit quietly, reader reads to emphasize story and narrative (and characters if they're talented/brave enough to do voices), pictures are shown around perfunctorily, the books are finished, the kids stay mostly quiet.
In the Whole Book Approach (a method Lambert developed while working with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art) the narrative is relegated to simply another facet of the whole picture book as a purposefully created entity using multiple disciplines and arts to present a concept and narrative. Here, equal or more focus is given to describing and questioning the art, the book design decisions, and even to choices in typography and page borders. Even more scandalous, this is a discussion-based approach, so not only are the kids supposed to talk, the "storyteller" is actually supposed to interrupt the story on each page and ASK them for their thoughts on what's going on with the art, design, typesetting, and whatever (directed questions, of course). What heresy!
She's really gung-ho about it, and her enthusiasm is infectious, but I do have a few qualms.
Point one: I work with toddlers. No amount of directed questions will forstall the flood of "I have a dog and a mommy and a bedroom and it was my birthday and my gramma is a princess..." stream of consciousness that 4 year olds do so well when presented with any sort of official adult attention. So this is already limited to older kids who can actually process and respond to prompts, and to take at least a little bit of time thinking about what they're seeing before chattering away. She talks about kindergarten groups, but even then I wonder if I could lead them well enough for the process to be coherent.
Point two: If you really dedicate to this, the narrative is going to get shafted, and I do not like that. I LOVE that she wants to focus on the art and design, and to bring attention to what are very much informed and purposeful choices, and to bring kids consciously into an awareness of motifs and memes and conventions that we follow in our culture to signal specific ideas or concepts or moods. All of that is really really great, and SHOULD be taught to kids - BUUUUT... it bothers me that the method to achieve this will totally wreck the flow of a good story. Grrr. I am coming at this from a performative and theatrical background, and really truly this bugs me quite a lot. My personal opinion is that this sort of work should be done with books that the reader and audience already knows extremely well. That way the first encounter with a story is always smooth and presents the story, and does justice to the narrative and pictures being a natural and cohesive unified experience (which is what I THINK most picture book authors and artists want anyway - for the work to just meld seamlessly into this delightful experience that kids love, even if they can't specify why they love it). So, book first as narrative, THEN you go can back in with the post-season analysis and really dig into the why and how and wherefore, with as much discussion and digression and not-ever-finishing-the-actual-book as you like.
Point three: Some people like being all meta about their pleasure activities, and (here's the point where I think Lambert is being a bit more universal than she ought) some people really really don't. And I think those preferences that we have as adults are present as kids. Everyone knows the trope of the annoying TV-watching friend who constantly wants to talk talk talk and overanalyze and overthink every little part of Walking Dead or Game of Thrones - and it's not a positive representation. I hate to think that an overenthusiastic Whole Book Approach during a storytime would turn a kid off of reading because they now associate pleasure reading with that piecemeal and reductive meta-critical approach, and it's not a requirement - simply another way to appreciate and enjoy this particular type of book. And I say this as someone who actually already likes to analyze and critique books and artworks - I just realize that not everyone shares that particular impulse. Not everyone is a book reviewer, and not everyone should be. Not everyone wants to think about critical art theory while they relax, and they shouldn't feel like they have to. And there is the other massive downside here - there's the presenter's opinions on this analytical approach to consider as well. This book is likely to cause a small, quiet revolution in at least some places, and I really feel sorry for any librarians and educators who are forced into this method by decree rather than inclination, or any parents doing this out of a sense of obligation towards their child's development. I feel even MORE sorry for the kids they're presenting to. As much harm could come from an individual kid being not interested in the process, infinitely more harm can come to entire classrooms or groups from a slack or grudging approach by an adult forced into presenting this Approach by a boss or by guilt. I strongly believe that you should only read books that you at least LIKE, because kids are perceptive, and for every book I personally don't like enough to tell (SkippyJon Jones, I'm looking at you) there's other people who LOVE it and can do it justice and be enthusiastic. Please please don't make presenters use a storytime format that they don't intrinsically believe to be valuable or worthwhile - it's just going to backfire.
That was an awful lot of criticism, but those three basic points are really my main hesitations. Lambert presents her points clearly and with beautifully-selected picture-book examples, and explains her reasoning and her methodology rationally. I do support her goals, and I think that her method is fundamentally sound. I don't have any desire to see this format replace or supersede "traditional" storytimes, and despite her enthusiastic proposal of this method, I don't think she really does either. There's a time and a place for reading for uninhibited pleasure and for enjoyable critical analysis, and a perfect program would incorporate both, given by adults passionate about books and reading and children's developing minds.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Juvenile Fiction: Short and Shivery, Robert D. San Souci & Katherine Coville
Short and Shivery
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Katherine Coville
ISBN: 0440418046 (Yearling paperback)
Re-Read August 2, 2015
I had this book as a child, so when I saw it in the "freebies" bin at a local used book store, I couldn't help but snatch it back up and re-read the stories. I was especially interested in revisiting this now that I've been working on my own storytelling. I seem to be edging towards southern versions of tales, and there were three in particular that were very interesting: Tailypo (of course), The Witch Cat, and Scared to Death.
Short summary and thoughts on each "shivery" in the collection:
1) The Robber Bridegroom, from the Brothers Grimm.
A classic fairy tale set-up with a greedy merchant and a lovely, clever, and resourceful daughter who rescues herself and an old crone from being sold into marriage slavery to a sadistic robber.
Some interesting modern parallels here with the recent high-profile long-term kidnapping cases, and to the Boko Haram / ISIS focus on terrorism through sexual slavery. Some nasty things in the world, but they aren't new things.
2) Jack Frost, from the Russian folklore tradition.
Another classic fairy tale. A mother with a daughter and step-daughter, of course the step-child is the good one who is despised and ill-treated. Mother sends her out into the harsh Russian winter to freeze, but the girl is so good and sweet that even cold-hearted Jack Frost is touched, and gifts her with furs and diamonds. Mom sends the sulky real daughter out to get her own share, but the girl can't resist being a snot, and is frozen to death by morning.
Love the parallels here with Diamonds and Toads, and the faint feel of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga stories. There are some interesting links possible with this story.
3) The Waterfall of Ghosts, from a Japanese folktale.
This one was interesting, because it was mainly women characters. A group of weavers in a town below a haunted waterfall sit up late one night talking boasts, and one girl gets carried away, boasting that she'll travel to the shrine at the base of the waterfall and back that very night, and bring the donation box back with her as proof. The other girls all pledge their day's weaving if she does. She travels out, but is overcome by greed and steals the coins from the box, bringing a nearly-empty box back to the others and bemoaning the sad state of charity in the world. Later that night, she's hunted down by the ghosts of the waterfall, and returns the money to the shrine, along with all her winnings from her boast.
I was mainly interested that this story has the boastful claims entirely among women. Usually it's a group of men who are trying to one-up each other. This made for a nice change.
4) The Ghost's Cap, from a Russian ghost story.
Another boaster, but this one is a girl who is trying to show off for the boy she's after. She brags that she'll go to a haunted graveyard and return with the name of the ghost that people have seen there. She goes and scoffs at the ghost (believing it to be her boy) and snatches the cap from his head to take back as proof she went. She gathers her winnings, and tosses the nasty cap into the river. That night, she's visited by a presence wanting the cap back, but she hasn't got it. A sad ending for her, as the priest tries an exorcism, and the vengeful ghost takes the girl back with him, leaving nothing but her hair and jacket behind.
This one has fun shades of Tailypo there, and that Lovecraft story about the gem from the Dutch grave - in that losing the item the ghost wants dooms the person.
5) The Witch Cat, from Virginia, USA.
A widower and his young daughter go against local advice and settle in an abandoned farmstead next to a pond. The widower is soon courted by a willowy young lady from the plot next door, with bright green eyes and long sharp nails. His daughter is afraid of the lady, but the father is smitten, until the girl begins to take ill and complain of something stealing her breath at night. The farmer sits up one night to trap the intruder, and is shocked to chop the arm off of an enormous black cat creature. The next morning, the lady is also missing an arm, and the farmer finally figures it out. Too late for him, as the confrontation kills both him and the lady, leaving the daughter an orphan.
This one is great fun. The nice touch for me is the townspeople warning them away from the suspiciously empty homestead, without ever coming out and accusing anyone of anything.
6) The Green Mist, from Lincolnshire, England.
This is one of the only fae tales in the collection. I also know it as Crown of Cowslips. A village girl is very ill one winter, and is about to die, but she declares that if she could live "just one summer like the cowslips, she'd be content." Her mother hushes her quickly, but that night the healing spring "green mist" flows over the land and the girl recovers. That spring she is lively and happy, and falls in love as spring begins to mature into summer. Her lover spots the stand of cowslips beside the door and plucks them to make a summer crown for his love, but when she sees the cut flowers she shrieks and bars the door, leaving him alone and confused. She dies that night during the Summer festival.
There are a lot of things going on with this one. Firstly, the fae influence is slight but present. Her declaration is understood to be heard by a bogie and granted as an evil mischief. I'm also interested in the specificity that she's only to live as long as those specific cowslips (and why, if the mother was so worried about anyone messing with them, she didn't just put a sign up beside them). I also feel really bad for our unnamed suitor, who did everything right, and got shut out and abandoned at the end with no explanation. If I were telling, I think that would be the main thing that got changed, or I'd use it to start some sort of Orpheo & Eurycide sort of quest.
7) The Cegua, from Costa Rica.
A traveler-beware tale; a version of the nasty hitch-hiker. A young man is traveling late at night and sees a beautiful maiden by the side of the road. He offers her a ride, and she slowly morphs into a nightmare being with a skeletal horse's head and long talons. He's saved by arriving at the busy hacienda he was traveling to.
I always get a little grumpy about these - when the mysterious old man tells you at the cafe before your trip that seductive strangers are actually demon creatures, why would you then immediately let the sweet seductive girl onto your horse with you?
8) The Ghostly Little Girl, from gold-rush California.
A group of girls makes a new friend: a girl from the settlement of fishing shacks along the ocean. The girl is excited to be going to school with her new friends, but makes one last trip out with her father - and that night is a terrific storm, and they never come back. The girls worry about their new friend, and head down to the now-abandoned shack to see if they can find her - but find her waterlogged ghost instead.
Extra creepy because of the inclusion of grade-school kids for the cast-members. Love the morbid descriptions of the moldy old fishing shack and the wet slap of the ocean waves.
9) The Midnight Mass of the Dead, Norse folktale.
A very pious elderly lady attends mass every day, and is excited to attend the very first early Christmas mass, so she sets out her best clothes, and says a prayer for her best friend, who died earlier in the year. Awakened by a strange light, she fears she's late for church, and hurries to the chapel, where a strange priest and oddly-familiar parishioners fill the building. She's even more upset when the sermon and verses are all about death and punishment and hatred of the living. When she realizes that the only sound coming from the pews is from her, she realizes her mistake. Her newly-dead friend warns her to run before the service is over, but she is too slow, and loses her coat to the vengeful dead old neighbors as she flees. Returning to church the next morning, the shreds of her coat are too much to bear, and she flees once more.
The sweet dead friend giving her a warning was a nice touch, but I wanted to know why the dead are so unhappy on Christmas particularly, and why they were so evil and confrontational to begin with. There's also a sloppy bit at the ending where the wording is contradictory and confusing.
10) Tailypo, rural USA.
An old man lives in the woods with his hunting dogs, but he's been on lean times - nothing to hunt or fish for weeks. So when he spies a strange critter in his cabin and evicts it by hacking off it's long luxurious tale, he isn't too proud to stew that tail right up and eat it for dinner. That night he hears a whisper "where's my tailypo?" and he sends a dog out after it. The dog doesn't return, but the voice does. Next dog goes and fails to return, and the voice is soon back. Last dog is now in bed with him, but he sends it out and it's gone with a horrible yelp - and the voice is now inside, and now on the bed. He finally claims "I don't have your tailypo!" and the voice rejoins "Oh yes you have!" and eats him right up.
This one has been around for ages. It would be interesting to see if it could be linked up with some other tales and made longer or more elaborate without ruining the arc of the horror about the thing creeping up to exact revenge.
11) Lady Eleanor's Mantle, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This one claims to be based on a true story. Lady Eleanor is from England, so she's miles better than any of the hick rube Americans in this stupid Boston town. She insists on wearing her fancy mantle from the continent, and likewise insists on scorning a young suitor who had followed her across the ocean. A ball was held in the Lady's honor to welcome her, and all noted her reserve and weary aspect, but also noted the beauty of the English mantle. Halfway through, the ball was cancelled abruptly, when the Lady's absence was noted. That next morning, the fearsome warning ran through the city - a smallpox outbreak, and the Lady's house was quarantined. The stinger has the young man braving disease to race to his Lady's side, where he finds a hideous pocked figure in her bed, and goes quite mad.
A very strange early entry in the world of medical suspense thrillers.
12) The Soldier and the Vampire, a folktale from Russia
Another traveler-beware tale like The Cegua, and a Clever-Jack sort of story. A Russian soldier is on leave to attend his sister's wedding, when he's warned about a wizard who recently died in a nearby village. He travels home without seeing anything amiss, until he reaches the house and discovers his sister, anemic and near death. The soldier, being a man of the world, knows that the wizard is using vampirism to steal the life from his sister and return from the dead. That just can't be allowed, so he races off in the night to find the wizard's grave and kill it for good. Along the road, he is joined by a silent figure, who he realizes is the evil one himself, and the soldier passes himself off as an apprentice wizard. They then walk and camp in companionable nature, until the wizard reveals that he was not taken in by the soldier's ruse, and they fight until dawn, when the evil one collapses, then morphs into a writhing mass of insects and grubs that the soldier has to individually exterminate to truly kill the monster.
Nice touch with the bugs at the end. Would have liked to get more than one sentence about the sister recovering.
13) The Skeleton's Dance, from Japan.
Two friends head off to the big city to make their fortunes. One works hard and becomes wealthy, while the other falls in with gamblers and druggies. They both decide to travel back to their hometown to get Mr Bad Life Choices away from his temptations, but BLC realizes he has a chance at a new life, and kills his friend in a mountain pass, then claims his friend's life as his own. After running through all his friend's money and accrued goodwill, he heads back to the city, and is accosted by his friend's bones laying in the path where he was killed so many months before. The bones rise up and offer to provide a means of easy employment - the bones will dance for free (needing no food or support) and the friend can collect easy money from people gawping at the spectacle. This works great for Mr BLC until he's famous enough to be hosted by the local lord, whereupon the skeleton fails to act, is abused, and finally calls BLC out on his treachery and murder.
A really nice and satisfactory delayed-justice story. Loved the way that BLC just walked right into his own doom and didn't see it coming, because he was too wrapped up in his own selfishness and feeling like everyone owed him.
14) Scared to Death, from Charleston, USA.
Another braggart tale. This one has a young debutante trying to steal a beau away from his current girlfriend, a shy and mousey girl. In an attempt to impress the young man, the young lady swears she'll go to a haunted grave in the nearby graveyard, and snatches the gentleman's walking stick to leave at the grave as proof. She heads out alone, makes it over to the grave, and slams the walking stick into the soft ground, but she's nervous and jittery in the spooky darkness. Her fears are realized when she tries to leave and she's held back by a mysterious unseen force. She freaks out, falls down, and is found dead the next morning, her cloak pinned to the ground by the walking stick she slammed down her own self.
This one also is nicely karmic - if you're going to be a snotty braggart, don't be stupid about it. It also has a nice common-sense touch to it. Everyone's had a not-so-proud moment when you worked yourself up or scared yourself about something that turned out to be completely harmless or normal.
15) Swallowed Alive, a British folktale.
A sneaky washerwoman is always around when things go missing, and she' accused by her neighbors of being a thief. She calls upon God and the Earth as her witnesses that she's an honest woman, even when she's pretty much caught in the act. The earth opens up like a whirlpool and sucks her in up to her waist, and the priest begs her to repent and be saved, but she insists that she's not a thief, whereupon the whirlpool sucks her entirely in, and subsequently spits back out the stolen items.
This one reads like the awful heavy-handed morality tales I got fed as a child from the Uncle Arthur books. Yikes.
16) The Deacon's Ghost, an Icelandic folktale.
A Deacon lived on one side of a fjord, and his love on the other. They fell in love one winter, and he promised to come back and fetch her for a wedding the next winter as soon as the fjord ices over again. Sadly, he's killed on his way back in a freak accident, and she doesn't know it. When he returns to fetch her, he acts strangely, but she's simply glad to see him again. They get to the church, but it's late at night, and he's not headed towards the church itself, but to the churchyard, where there's a single disturbed and empty grave! She fights free, and is guarded by the villagers every night from the undead lovesick deacon, until a priest from the closest city arrives to put him down for good.
This one was very sad. I felt sorry for the poor deacon and the poor girl who was left alone, and then frightened out of her wits afterwards. Sad ghost stories are harder, because they really drive home the utter unfairness of life and death.
17) Nuckelavee, from the Orkney Islands.
Short and shivery indeed. Nuckelavee is a weird cross between a kelpie and a demon, and it terrorizes the islanders, but is easily avoided by crossing fresh running water. This short bit tells of a local man's bad night when he found Nuckelavee coming towards him on a long empty road, with no running water nearby. A brazen approach, a quick sprint, and a tiny rivulet defeats the monster.
Not much too this one, but it's a fun little story that I can totally see a grizzled old man telling in a pub as a sort of "big fish" story.
18) Adventure of the German Student, Washington Irving.
Our German student has arrived in Paris to rid himself of a gloomy obsession; a demon is after his soul. Unfortunately, his timing isn't so hot, as he arrives just as Revolutionary fervor is hitting it's peak, and the smell of blood from the guillotines hangs heavy in the air. Understandably, his morbid fancies aren't much improved, and he hides out in his garret trying to avoid the masses of frenzied Parisians. He does have to head out for groceries, and tries to do so in the early mornings or late evenings when the streets are less crowded. One night walking home he spies a weeping lady on the steps of the guillotine. He rescues her and takes her home, and over the night falls in love with the wild young mourner. They pledge their hearts and souls, and he heads off the next morning without disturbing her to look for a bigger apartment. On his return, he finds her beheaded, and the officers confirm his worst fears - the lady was a victim of the guillotine the day before, and he's now pledged his everlasting soul to a dead woman walking.
This one needs a better name, to be honest. The French Lover would be at least slightly more descriptive. I love the association with a specific place and specific events, and the descriptions of the poor lady and the besotted (although not so bright) student are lively and morbid all at the same time. One of my favorites from the book.
19) Billy Moseby's Night Ride, from New England, USA.
Billy lives with his grandparents out on their rural farmstead, and everyone keeps clear of old Francis Woolcott - rumor is that he's a wizard. Billy is overcome with curiosity, and spies on the neighbor's bonfire one night, and is kidnapped on a wild ride through the countryside as the man releases spirits and hexes to torment his neighbors. When the night is over, Billy is encouraged to leave well enough alone, but now he's really inspired - he wants power like that himself. When he finally gets his courage up to go apprentice himself, he's too late. Woolcott is lying near death, and Billy watches helplessly as the demons that Woolcott worked with return in force to fetch his unwilling pitiful soul off to hell.
Another of the morality tale sort, but at least it has a younger protagonist, and an interesting look at the predjudices of old farm people. This one might be an interesting pairing with the Witch Cat - Woolcott and the cat lady would be an interesting pair.
20) The Hunter in the Haunted Forest, compiled from three Teton Sioux tales.
A brave hunter must venture into the haunted forest to feed his starving family, even though he knows that powerful spirits run rampant there, and have no love for the living. First he is overtaken by a powerful storm, and tries to shelter in a clearing, in a convenient teepee, but he overhears voices inside planning dark plots, and races away from them. When he camps deeper in the woods, and old man comes to his campfire, and reveals himself to be a ghost. The ghost offers a wager - if they wrestle and the hunter wins, he'll find plentiful game and a peaceful forest, but if the ghost wins, the hunter will be haunted and his whole family will die from hunger. The hunter wins (with a nice trick) and turns the ghostly old haunt into ashes, and then is delighted to find that the pact holds true, and the game is plentiful thereafter.
It's easy to tell that these are disconnected snippets, but I think that they all flow together decently well - they're more of a sequential narrative than a single arc, but they all hang together well, and give a nice picture of how frightening it must have been to be a hunter alone in the fall woods, knowing your skill is all that keeps your family alive.
21) Brother and Sister, a folktale found in Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi.
Another nasty-bridegroom story. A sister is promised in marriage to a man claiming to be from a rich neighboring tribe, but her brother is supicious of the strangely-acting man. He follows the wedded couple to the man's home, and quickly realizes it's a den of hyena demons. While the demon family is outside changing form, the boy races into the hut to warn his sister. They block the entrance to the enclosed yard with thorns, and barricade themselves in the hut, then as the demons continue to advance, escape out a window and into the nearby trees, where they flee frantically as the hyenas pursue them (destroying the trees as they go) until they reach a wide river. The bridegroom hyena continues to swim after them, even after the sun rises and he changes shape back to a man, but the siblings pelt him with rocks until he turns back.
A nice sibling story, but a little frustrating that all of the escape ideas are from the brother. Ah well.
22) The Lovers of Dismal Swamp, from Virginia, USA
A young pair of lovers lived on the edge of a swamp, until one day the young lady took sick and died. Her lover was utterly distraught, and refused to believe she was dead. As time went on, he began to obsess that she was alive, out in the swamp, and needed him to rescue her. He rushed out into the swamp one day, convinced that he saw her in the mist, with a lantern in her hand. He built a homemade raft and poled out towards her, and that was the last anyone saw him alive. Now hunters and fishers in that swamp claim you can see the duo poling a rickety raft along the waterways at dusk.
Short and shivery indeed - just over two pages long! The tone of this one is interesting, because there's no malice or evil ascribed to the boy or girl, even as ghosts.
23) Boneless, Shetland Isles.
Villagers were terrorized by a creature they called "Boneless" or simply "It" because no one could agree on what it looked like, or even what sort of thing it was. It gave off an aura of evil and terrorized households and farm animals simply by it's presence. One Christmas night, a farmer had enough. After a night of It bumping against his doors and scaring his cattle, he resolved to kill it for good. He raced out into the night and hurled an axe at it, killing it near the sea-cliff edge, and then burying it for good measure. That spring, a folklorist was curious about the legend, and learned where the burial spot was. He began to dig it up, until he noticed the "curdled light" and the milky fog seeping out of the hole. He ran for his life, and watched as It seeped out of the hole and headed towards the ocean. Two nights later, as he was wandering the cliff edges, he saw It in the water, long and stretched out, and formless. He turned to run, but it overtook him in an instant, and wrapped misty tentacles around him, dragging him over the edge of the cliff. He prayed desperately aloud, and the thing recoiled, took fire, released him, fell, and sizzled on the surface of the water below.
This sounds like a folktale that might have influenced Lovecraft back in the day. The insistence on the thing being unformed and indescribable, of strange oil-shimmer colors on white fish-belly hue, and the affinity to water - sounds like a baby shoggoth to me. The fact that a folklorist is the one to poke at it and get punished for his temerity is also very Lovecraftian.
24) The Death Waltz, New Mexico
Elizabeth was newly come to Fort Union, and she was a beauty from back East. Everyone adored her, and all the soldiers and ranchers courted her, but she was too good for any of them, and laughed at them. The handsomest and best social match was Frank Sutter, who was smitten with him. She was perfectly happy to be courted by such a fine officer, and when they had to leave on a raid and he asked her hand, she agreed - and upped the deal by promising that even if he died, she'd never wed another. Of course, the obvious happens. During the raid, someone saw him go down, but his body was never recovered. The fort gossips noted that Elizabeth didn't seem too perturbed by the death of her forever love, and tongues wagged even more harshly when she became engaged to a man from back East, who was leaving the fort to return there. At the wedding reception, the night turned stormy and wild, and the doors slammed open to reveal Sutter, muddy and corpselike, with terrible wounds all over his body. He grabbed the new bride from her husband, motioned to the band, and began a terrible waltz with her - by the end of it she was dead.
This was another of the ones I remembered from childhood, because I always thought the "bride" was a silly heartless thing to take advantage of someone and make stupid promises, especially to a soldier in wartime. Serves her right.
25) The Ghost of Misery Hill, California, USA.
Old Tom Bowers worked the mine on Misery Hill, until he passed away. He was an ornery and private man, and even after he passed, no one could bring themselves to jump his claim - even after death. That is, until Jim Brandon's debts got so bad he had no other choice. It started calmly enough, with him noticing that his tools and equipment were misplaced every morning. Then he started noticing someone using his sluice to pan gold. If that wasn't bad enough, then the notices started going up, claiming the mine in Tom Bower's name. Then he saw the ghost and his nerves vanished, and he shot it - which of course made Old Tom mighty unhappy, and the now-vengeful ghost came after Jim with his pickaxe. No one ever saw Jim again, but they did find his gun - pinned to the ground by a faintly-glowing pick driven straight through the barrel.
A good old wild-west gold-mining ghost story is such fun.
26) The Loup-Garou, a French-Canadian folktale.
Another short one, of the evil-thing-chasing-you-in-the-woods category. Pierre lives in a lovely cabin in the woods, and he and his wife are very happy there, until she gets sick and he has to ride through the woods after dark to fetch a doctor for her. He sets off, and while they're making good time at first, suddenly the horse slows down as if he's pulling a heavy load. Pierre looks behind him - straight into the eyes of an enormous wolf. Pierre freaks out, and he and the horse begin the run for their lives, but it's no use - the thing catches them. Pierre draws his knife and manages to draw blood before the wolf eviscerates him, and the loup-garou (as tradition dictates) is forced to change back into human form and flee. Pierre gets while the getting is good, and he and the doctor make sure to bring crosses with them as they pass through the woods on the return trip.
This one really isn't much, but the requirement to change to human and flee if blood is drawn is an interestingly specific limitation. I am very curious about that part.
27) The Golem, an original tale based on Jewish folklore.
A merchant learned of the mysteries of the golem, and hired a rabbi to create one for him. He immediately began abusing this perfect servant, treating it like the dirt it came from. But the golem kept growing, and it slowly got less obedient, and even began to act sullen and unhappy. The merchant refused to admit that he had a problem, and kept on abusing his magical servant, until one day he woke to find the golem systematically dismantling his house. He flees to the rabbi who teaches him how to destroy the golem, but when the merchant manages to do so, the golem collapses into a mass of inanimate clay that falls onto the merchant, crushing him to death.
LOVED this story, and the just desserts of the pompous asshole merchant who thought he had the perfect slave to abuse.
28) Lavender, raodsides, USA. (see also Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road's base ghost story)
Two guys were headed to the dance, and they see a pretty girl by the side of the road, dressed in a lavender party dress. They stop and pick her up, and one of the boys lends her his jacket. They have a great time at the dance, but when it's time to leave, the girl is distraught and demands to be let out on the side of the road, close to where they found her originally. The boys are convinced she was just "letting them down easy" because she didn't want to go steady with either of them, and they head down the dirt driveway to visit her the next day. The door is opened by an ancient woman, who weeps when she hears their story. Her little girl's favorite color was lavender, and she's been dead for nearly 50 years now - every spring she goes out to dance with the boys, and every time she almost gets back home before she fades away. The boys think this is a set-up or a trick and leave affronted, until they see the graveyard next door, with Lavender's gravestone draped with the letter jacket from last night draped over it.
Sweet and sad, and one of my favorite ghost stories. Love how it's so universally USA - it doesn't need a time or a place or any identifying details to be haunting and mystical.
29) The Goblin Spider, a legend from Japan.
Raiko, the famous samurai, is sent by the lord to kill a ferocious goblin that is shaped like a giant spider, and is terrorizing the countryside. On the way there, he is directed by the floating skull of a former victim of the spider. They find a deserted palace, inhabited by a creepy bug like ancient crone. She warns them away, then shifts into a mist and sinks through the floor as a legion of demons attack the samurai and his companion. They fight for hours, until the sun begins to rise, and the demons vanish. Then a beautiful pale maiden appears, but blinds them with unwholesome light, and shapeshifts into a creepy elongated monstrosity that oozes sticky white threads. She also changes to mist and seeps into the floor, and the samurai realize that she bleeds white sticky blood. The sun has fully risen, and now the samurai realize that there is a cavern or hollow beneath the flagstones. They pull them up, angering the mighty spider (who was the hag, and then the fair maiden) who attacks them brutally. The samurai fight valiantly, and finally slay the hellish spider beast, and take it's head back to court for their rewards.
Ew. Spiders.
30) The Halloween Pony, a folktale from France.
Grandmother warned the boys to stay inside on Halloween night, but the lively lads are determined to have some fun. They run out and find a neighbor's pony has gotten loose from it's pen. They all pile on, and strangely, even 4, 5, 6 and more boys seem to fit comfortably on the small pony. The pony doesn't even seem to mind the weight, and frolics and cavorts around, until he reaches the seaside, and the boys try to slow it down. It refuses, and they then try to dismount, but they're stuck. The boys can do nothing but watch in terror as the pony descends into the sea, and none of the village boys who were out that night were ever found.
So, the French version of kelpies, essentially. Plus a little morality guilt laid in on top.
I would have preferred this collection to stop at 28, and just skipped the spider and the silly morals, and ended on a high note with Lavender. Ahh well.
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Katherine Coville
ISBN: 0440418046 (Yearling paperback)
Re-Read August 2, 2015
I had this book as a child, so when I saw it in the "freebies" bin at a local used book store, I couldn't help but snatch it back up and re-read the stories. I was especially interested in revisiting this now that I've been working on my own storytelling. I seem to be edging towards southern versions of tales, and there were three in particular that were very interesting: Tailypo (of course), The Witch Cat, and Scared to Death.
Short summary and thoughts on each "shivery" in the collection:
1) The Robber Bridegroom, from the Brothers Grimm.
A classic fairy tale set-up with a greedy merchant and a lovely, clever, and resourceful daughter who rescues herself and an old crone from being sold into marriage slavery to a sadistic robber.
Some interesting modern parallels here with the recent high-profile long-term kidnapping cases, and to the Boko Haram / ISIS focus on terrorism through sexual slavery. Some nasty things in the world, but they aren't new things.
2) Jack Frost, from the Russian folklore tradition.
Another classic fairy tale. A mother with a daughter and step-daughter, of course the step-child is the good one who is despised and ill-treated. Mother sends her out into the harsh Russian winter to freeze, but the girl is so good and sweet that even cold-hearted Jack Frost is touched, and gifts her with furs and diamonds. Mom sends the sulky real daughter out to get her own share, but the girl can't resist being a snot, and is frozen to death by morning.
Love the parallels here with Diamonds and Toads, and the faint feel of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga stories. There are some interesting links possible with this story.
3) The Waterfall of Ghosts, from a Japanese folktale.
This one was interesting, because it was mainly women characters. A group of weavers in a town below a haunted waterfall sit up late one night talking boasts, and one girl gets carried away, boasting that she'll travel to the shrine at the base of the waterfall and back that very night, and bring the donation box back with her as proof. The other girls all pledge their day's weaving if she does. She travels out, but is overcome by greed and steals the coins from the box, bringing a nearly-empty box back to the others and bemoaning the sad state of charity in the world. Later that night, she's hunted down by the ghosts of the waterfall, and returns the money to the shrine, along with all her winnings from her boast.
I was mainly interested that this story has the boastful claims entirely among women. Usually it's a group of men who are trying to one-up each other. This made for a nice change.
4) The Ghost's Cap, from a Russian ghost story.
Another boaster, but this one is a girl who is trying to show off for the boy she's after. She brags that she'll go to a haunted graveyard and return with the name of the ghost that people have seen there. She goes and scoffs at the ghost (believing it to be her boy) and snatches the cap from his head to take back as proof she went. She gathers her winnings, and tosses the nasty cap into the river. That night, she's visited by a presence wanting the cap back, but she hasn't got it. A sad ending for her, as the priest tries an exorcism, and the vengeful ghost takes the girl back with him, leaving nothing but her hair and jacket behind.
This one has fun shades of Tailypo there, and that Lovecraft story about the gem from the Dutch grave - in that losing the item the ghost wants dooms the person.
5) The Witch Cat, from Virginia, USA.
A widower and his young daughter go against local advice and settle in an abandoned farmstead next to a pond. The widower is soon courted by a willowy young lady from the plot next door, with bright green eyes and long sharp nails. His daughter is afraid of the lady, but the father is smitten, until the girl begins to take ill and complain of something stealing her breath at night. The farmer sits up one night to trap the intruder, and is shocked to chop the arm off of an enormous black cat creature. The next morning, the lady is also missing an arm, and the farmer finally figures it out. Too late for him, as the confrontation kills both him and the lady, leaving the daughter an orphan.
This one is great fun. The nice touch for me is the townspeople warning them away from the suspiciously empty homestead, without ever coming out and accusing anyone of anything.
6) The Green Mist, from Lincolnshire, England.
This is one of the only fae tales in the collection. I also know it as Crown of Cowslips. A village girl is very ill one winter, and is about to die, but she declares that if she could live "just one summer like the cowslips, she'd be content." Her mother hushes her quickly, but that night the healing spring "green mist" flows over the land and the girl recovers. That spring she is lively and happy, and falls in love as spring begins to mature into summer. Her lover spots the stand of cowslips beside the door and plucks them to make a summer crown for his love, but when she sees the cut flowers she shrieks and bars the door, leaving him alone and confused. She dies that night during the Summer festival.
There are a lot of things going on with this one. Firstly, the fae influence is slight but present. Her declaration is understood to be heard by a bogie and granted as an evil mischief. I'm also interested in the specificity that she's only to live as long as those specific cowslips (and why, if the mother was so worried about anyone messing with them, she didn't just put a sign up beside them). I also feel really bad for our unnamed suitor, who did everything right, and got shut out and abandoned at the end with no explanation. If I were telling, I think that would be the main thing that got changed, or I'd use it to start some sort of Orpheo & Eurycide sort of quest.
7) The Cegua, from Costa Rica.
A traveler-beware tale; a version of the nasty hitch-hiker. A young man is traveling late at night and sees a beautiful maiden by the side of the road. He offers her a ride, and she slowly morphs into a nightmare being with a skeletal horse's head and long talons. He's saved by arriving at the busy hacienda he was traveling to.
I always get a little grumpy about these - when the mysterious old man tells you at the cafe before your trip that seductive strangers are actually demon creatures, why would you then immediately let the sweet seductive girl onto your horse with you?
8) The Ghostly Little Girl, from gold-rush California.
A group of girls makes a new friend: a girl from the settlement of fishing shacks along the ocean. The girl is excited to be going to school with her new friends, but makes one last trip out with her father - and that night is a terrific storm, and they never come back. The girls worry about their new friend, and head down to the now-abandoned shack to see if they can find her - but find her waterlogged ghost instead.
Extra creepy because of the inclusion of grade-school kids for the cast-members. Love the morbid descriptions of the moldy old fishing shack and the wet slap of the ocean waves.
9) The Midnight Mass of the Dead, Norse folktale.
A very pious elderly lady attends mass every day, and is excited to attend the very first early Christmas mass, so she sets out her best clothes, and says a prayer for her best friend, who died earlier in the year. Awakened by a strange light, she fears she's late for church, and hurries to the chapel, where a strange priest and oddly-familiar parishioners fill the building. She's even more upset when the sermon and verses are all about death and punishment and hatred of the living. When she realizes that the only sound coming from the pews is from her, she realizes her mistake. Her newly-dead friend warns her to run before the service is over, but she is too slow, and loses her coat to the vengeful dead old neighbors as she flees. Returning to church the next morning, the shreds of her coat are too much to bear, and she flees once more.
The sweet dead friend giving her a warning was a nice touch, but I wanted to know why the dead are so unhappy on Christmas particularly, and why they were so evil and confrontational to begin with. There's also a sloppy bit at the ending where the wording is contradictory and confusing.
10) Tailypo, rural USA.
An old man lives in the woods with his hunting dogs, but he's been on lean times - nothing to hunt or fish for weeks. So when he spies a strange critter in his cabin and evicts it by hacking off it's long luxurious tale, he isn't too proud to stew that tail right up and eat it for dinner. That night he hears a whisper "where's my tailypo?" and he sends a dog out after it. The dog doesn't return, but the voice does. Next dog goes and fails to return, and the voice is soon back. Last dog is now in bed with him, but he sends it out and it's gone with a horrible yelp - and the voice is now inside, and now on the bed. He finally claims "I don't have your tailypo!" and the voice rejoins "Oh yes you have!" and eats him right up.
This one has been around for ages. It would be interesting to see if it could be linked up with some other tales and made longer or more elaborate without ruining the arc of the horror about the thing creeping up to exact revenge.
11) Lady Eleanor's Mantle, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This one claims to be based on a true story. Lady Eleanor is from England, so she's miles better than any of the hick rube Americans in this stupid Boston town. She insists on wearing her fancy mantle from the continent, and likewise insists on scorning a young suitor who had followed her across the ocean. A ball was held in the Lady's honor to welcome her, and all noted her reserve and weary aspect, but also noted the beauty of the English mantle. Halfway through, the ball was cancelled abruptly, when the Lady's absence was noted. That next morning, the fearsome warning ran through the city - a smallpox outbreak, and the Lady's house was quarantined. The stinger has the young man braving disease to race to his Lady's side, where he finds a hideous pocked figure in her bed, and goes quite mad.
A very strange early entry in the world of medical suspense thrillers.
12) The Soldier and the Vampire, a folktale from Russia
Another traveler-beware tale like The Cegua, and a Clever-Jack sort of story. A Russian soldier is on leave to attend his sister's wedding, when he's warned about a wizard who recently died in a nearby village. He travels home without seeing anything amiss, until he reaches the house and discovers his sister, anemic and near death. The soldier, being a man of the world, knows that the wizard is using vampirism to steal the life from his sister and return from the dead. That just can't be allowed, so he races off in the night to find the wizard's grave and kill it for good. Along the road, he is joined by a silent figure, who he realizes is the evil one himself, and the soldier passes himself off as an apprentice wizard. They then walk and camp in companionable nature, until the wizard reveals that he was not taken in by the soldier's ruse, and they fight until dawn, when the evil one collapses, then morphs into a writhing mass of insects and grubs that the soldier has to individually exterminate to truly kill the monster.
Nice touch with the bugs at the end. Would have liked to get more than one sentence about the sister recovering.
13) The Skeleton's Dance, from Japan.
Two friends head off to the big city to make their fortunes. One works hard and becomes wealthy, while the other falls in with gamblers and druggies. They both decide to travel back to their hometown to get Mr Bad Life Choices away from his temptations, but BLC realizes he has a chance at a new life, and kills his friend in a mountain pass, then claims his friend's life as his own. After running through all his friend's money and accrued goodwill, he heads back to the city, and is accosted by his friend's bones laying in the path where he was killed so many months before. The bones rise up and offer to provide a means of easy employment - the bones will dance for free (needing no food or support) and the friend can collect easy money from people gawping at the spectacle. This works great for Mr BLC until he's famous enough to be hosted by the local lord, whereupon the skeleton fails to act, is abused, and finally calls BLC out on his treachery and murder.
A really nice and satisfactory delayed-justice story. Loved the way that BLC just walked right into his own doom and didn't see it coming, because he was too wrapped up in his own selfishness and feeling like everyone owed him.
14) Scared to Death, from Charleston, USA.
Another braggart tale. This one has a young debutante trying to steal a beau away from his current girlfriend, a shy and mousey girl. In an attempt to impress the young man, the young lady swears she'll go to a haunted grave in the nearby graveyard, and snatches the gentleman's walking stick to leave at the grave as proof. She heads out alone, makes it over to the grave, and slams the walking stick into the soft ground, but she's nervous and jittery in the spooky darkness. Her fears are realized when she tries to leave and she's held back by a mysterious unseen force. She freaks out, falls down, and is found dead the next morning, her cloak pinned to the ground by the walking stick she slammed down her own self.
This one also is nicely karmic - if you're going to be a snotty braggart, don't be stupid about it. It also has a nice common-sense touch to it. Everyone's had a not-so-proud moment when you worked yourself up or scared yourself about something that turned out to be completely harmless or normal.
15) Swallowed Alive, a British folktale.
A sneaky washerwoman is always around when things go missing, and she' accused by her neighbors of being a thief. She calls upon God and the Earth as her witnesses that she's an honest woman, even when she's pretty much caught in the act. The earth opens up like a whirlpool and sucks her in up to her waist, and the priest begs her to repent and be saved, but she insists that she's not a thief, whereupon the whirlpool sucks her entirely in, and subsequently spits back out the stolen items.
This one reads like the awful heavy-handed morality tales I got fed as a child from the Uncle Arthur books. Yikes.
16) The Deacon's Ghost, an Icelandic folktale.
A Deacon lived on one side of a fjord, and his love on the other. They fell in love one winter, and he promised to come back and fetch her for a wedding the next winter as soon as the fjord ices over again. Sadly, he's killed on his way back in a freak accident, and she doesn't know it. When he returns to fetch her, he acts strangely, but she's simply glad to see him again. They get to the church, but it's late at night, and he's not headed towards the church itself, but to the churchyard, where there's a single disturbed and empty grave! She fights free, and is guarded by the villagers every night from the undead lovesick deacon, until a priest from the closest city arrives to put him down for good.
This one was very sad. I felt sorry for the poor deacon and the poor girl who was left alone, and then frightened out of her wits afterwards. Sad ghost stories are harder, because they really drive home the utter unfairness of life and death.
17) Nuckelavee, from the Orkney Islands.
Short and shivery indeed. Nuckelavee is a weird cross between a kelpie and a demon, and it terrorizes the islanders, but is easily avoided by crossing fresh running water. This short bit tells of a local man's bad night when he found Nuckelavee coming towards him on a long empty road, with no running water nearby. A brazen approach, a quick sprint, and a tiny rivulet defeats the monster.
Not much too this one, but it's a fun little story that I can totally see a grizzled old man telling in a pub as a sort of "big fish" story.
18) Adventure of the German Student, Washington Irving.
Our German student has arrived in Paris to rid himself of a gloomy obsession; a demon is after his soul. Unfortunately, his timing isn't so hot, as he arrives just as Revolutionary fervor is hitting it's peak, and the smell of blood from the guillotines hangs heavy in the air. Understandably, his morbid fancies aren't much improved, and he hides out in his garret trying to avoid the masses of frenzied Parisians. He does have to head out for groceries, and tries to do so in the early mornings or late evenings when the streets are less crowded. One night walking home he spies a weeping lady on the steps of the guillotine. He rescues her and takes her home, and over the night falls in love with the wild young mourner. They pledge their hearts and souls, and he heads off the next morning without disturbing her to look for a bigger apartment. On his return, he finds her beheaded, and the officers confirm his worst fears - the lady was a victim of the guillotine the day before, and he's now pledged his everlasting soul to a dead woman walking.
This one needs a better name, to be honest. The French Lover would be at least slightly more descriptive. I love the association with a specific place and specific events, and the descriptions of the poor lady and the besotted (although not so bright) student are lively and morbid all at the same time. One of my favorites from the book.
19) Billy Moseby's Night Ride, from New England, USA.
Billy lives with his grandparents out on their rural farmstead, and everyone keeps clear of old Francis Woolcott - rumor is that he's a wizard. Billy is overcome with curiosity, and spies on the neighbor's bonfire one night, and is kidnapped on a wild ride through the countryside as the man releases spirits and hexes to torment his neighbors. When the night is over, Billy is encouraged to leave well enough alone, but now he's really inspired - he wants power like that himself. When he finally gets his courage up to go apprentice himself, he's too late. Woolcott is lying near death, and Billy watches helplessly as the demons that Woolcott worked with return in force to fetch his unwilling pitiful soul off to hell.
Another of the morality tale sort, but at least it has a younger protagonist, and an interesting look at the predjudices of old farm people. This one might be an interesting pairing with the Witch Cat - Woolcott and the cat lady would be an interesting pair.
20) The Hunter in the Haunted Forest, compiled from three Teton Sioux tales.
A brave hunter must venture into the haunted forest to feed his starving family, even though he knows that powerful spirits run rampant there, and have no love for the living. First he is overtaken by a powerful storm, and tries to shelter in a clearing, in a convenient teepee, but he overhears voices inside planning dark plots, and races away from them. When he camps deeper in the woods, and old man comes to his campfire, and reveals himself to be a ghost. The ghost offers a wager - if they wrestle and the hunter wins, he'll find plentiful game and a peaceful forest, but if the ghost wins, the hunter will be haunted and his whole family will die from hunger. The hunter wins (with a nice trick) and turns the ghostly old haunt into ashes, and then is delighted to find that the pact holds true, and the game is plentiful thereafter.
It's easy to tell that these are disconnected snippets, but I think that they all flow together decently well - they're more of a sequential narrative than a single arc, but they all hang together well, and give a nice picture of how frightening it must have been to be a hunter alone in the fall woods, knowing your skill is all that keeps your family alive.
21) Brother and Sister, a folktale found in Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi.
Another nasty-bridegroom story. A sister is promised in marriage to a man claiming to be from a rich neighboring tribe, but her brother is supicious of the strangely-acting man. He follows the wedded couple to the man's home, and quickly realizes it's a den of hyena demons. While the demon family is outside changing form, the boy races into the hut to warn his sister. They block the entrance to the enclosed yard with thorns, and barricade themselves in the hut, then as the demons continue to advance, escape out a window and into the nearby trees, where they flee frantically as the hyenas pursue them (destroying the trees as they go) until they reach a wide river. The bridegroom hyena continues to swim after them, even after the sun rises and he changes shape back to a man, but the siblings pelt him with rocks until he turns back.
A nice sibling story, but a little frustrating that all of the escape ideas are from the brother. Ah well.
22) The Lovers of Dismal Swamp, from Virginia, USA
A young pair of lovers lived on the edge of a swamp, until one day the young lady took sick and died. Her lover was utterly distraught, and refused to believe she was dead. As time went on, he began to obsess that she was alive, out in the swamp, and needed him to rescue her. He rushed out into the swamp one day, convinced that he saw her in the mist, with a lantern in her hand. He built a homemade raft and poled out towards her, and that was the last anyone saw him alive. Now hunters and fishers in that swamp claim you can see the duo poling a rickety raft along the waterways at dusk.
Short and shivery indeed - just over two pages long! The tone of this one is interesting, because there's no malice or evil ascribed to the boy or girl, even as ghosts.
23) Boneless, Shetland Isles.
Villagers were terrorized by a creature they called "Boneless" or simply "It" because no one could agree on what it looked like, or even what sort of thing it was. It gave off an aura of evil and terrorized households and farm animals simply by it's presence. One Christmas night, a farmer had enough. After a night of It bumping against his doors and scaring his cattle, he resolved to kill it for good. He raced out into the night and hurled an axe at it, killing it near the sea-cliff edge, and then burying it for good measure. That spring, a folklorist was curious about the legend, and learned where the burial spot was. He began to dig it up, until he noticed the "curdled light" and the milky fog seeping out of the hole. He ran for his life, and watched as It seeped out of the hole and headed towards the ocean. Two nights later, as he was wandering the cliff edges, he saw It in the water, long and stretched out, and formless. He turned to run, but it overtook him in an instant, and wrapped misty tentacles around him, dragging him over the edge of the cliff. He prayed desperately aloud, and the thing recoiled, took fire, released him, fell, and sizzled on the surface of the water below.
This sounds like a folktale that might have influenced Lovecraft back in the day. The insistence on the thing being unformed and indescribable, of strange oil-shimmer colors on white fish-belly hue, and the affinity to water - sounds like a baby shoggoth to me. The fact that a folklorist is the one to poke at it and get punished for his temerity is also very Lovecraftian.
24) The Death Waltz, New Mexico
Elizabeth was newly come to Fort Union, and she was a beauty from back East. Everyone adored her, and all the soldiers and ranchers courted her, but she was too good for any of them, and laughed at them. The handsomest and best social match was Frank Sutter, who was smitten with him. She was perfectly happy to be courted by such a fine officer, and when they had to leave on a raid and he asked her hand, she agreed - and upped the deal by promising that even if he died, she'd never wed another. Of course, the obvious happens. During the raid, someone saw him go down, but his body was never recovered. The fort gossips noted that Elizabeth didn't seem too perturbed by the death of her forever love, and tongues wagged even more harshly when she became engaged to a man from back East, who was leaving the fort to return there. At the wedding reception, the night turned stormy and wild, and the doors slammed open to reveal Sutter, muddy and corpselike, with terrible wounds all over his body. He grabbed the new bride from her husband, motioned to the band, and began a terrible waltz with her - by the end of it she was dead.
This was another of the ones I remembered from childhood, because I always thought the "bride" was a silly heartless thing to take advantage of someone and make stupid promises, especially to a soldier in wartime. Serves her right.
25) The Ghost of Misery Hill, California, USA.
Old Tom Bowers worked the mine on Misery Hill, until he passed away. He was an ornery and private man, and even after he passed, no one could bring themselves to jump his claim - even after death. That is, until Jim Brandon's debts got so bad he had no other choice. It started calmly enough, with him noticing that his tools and equipment were misplaced every morning. Then he started noticing someone using his sluice to pan gold. If that wasn't bad enough, then the notices started going up, claiming the mine in Tom Bower's name. Then he saw the ghost and his nerves vanished, and he shot it - which of course made Old Tom mighty unhappy, and the now-vengeful ghost came after Jim with his pickaxe. No one ever saw Jim again, but they did find his gun - pinned to the ground by a faintly-glowing pick driven straight through the barrel.
A good old wild-west gold-mining ghost story is such fun.
26) The Loup-Garou, a French-Canadian folktale.
Another short one, of the evil-thing-chasing-you-in-the-woods category. Pierre lives in a lovely cabin in the woods, and he and his wife are very happy there, until she gets sick and he has to ride through the woods after dark to fetch a doctor for her. He sets off, and while they're making good time at first, suddenly the horse slows down as if he's pulling a heavy load. Pierre looks behind him - straight into the eyes of an enormous wolf. Pierre freaks out, and he and the horse begin the run for their lives, but it's no use - the thing catches them. Pierre draws his knife and manages to draw blood before the wolf eviscerates him, and the loup-garou (as tradition dictates) is forced to change back into human form and flee. Pierre gets while the getting is good, and he and the doctor make sure to bring crosses with them as they pass through the woods on the return trip.
This one really isn't much, but the requirement to change to human and flee if blood is drawn is an interestingly specific limitation. I am very curious about that part.
27) The Golem, an original tale based on Jewish folklore.
A merchant learned of the mysteries of the golem, and hired a rabbi to create one for him. He immediately began abusing this perfect servant, treating it like the dirt it came from. But the golem kept growing, and it slowly got less obedient, and even began to act sullen and unhappy. The merchant refused to admit that he had a problem, and kept on abusing his magical servant, until one day he woke to find the golem systematically dismantling his house. He flees to the rabbi who teaches him how to destroy the golem, but when the merchant manages to do so, the golem collapses into a mass of inanimate clay that falls onto the merchant, crushing him to death.
LOVED this story, and the just desserts of the pompous asshole merchant who thought he had the perfect slave to abuse.
28) Lavender, raodsides, USA. (see also Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road's base ghost story)
Two guys were headed to the dance, and they see a pretty girl by the side of the road, dressed in a lavender party dress. They stop and pick her up, and one of the boys lends her his jacket. They have a great time at the dance, but when it's time to leave, the girl is distraught and demands to be let out on the side of the road, close to where they found her originally. The boys are convinced she was just "letting them down easy" because she didn't want to go steady with either of them, and they head down the dirt driveway to visit her the next day. The door is opened by an ancient woman, who weeps when she hears their story. Her little girl's favorite color was lavender, and she's been dead for nearly 50 years now - every spring she goes out to dance with the boys, and every time she almost gets back home before she fades away. The boys think this is a set-up or a trick and leave affronted, until they see the graveyard next door, with Lavender's gravestone draped with the letter jacket from last night draped over it.
Sweet and sad, and one of my favorite ghost stories. Love how it's so universally USA - it doesn't need a time or a place or any identifying details to be haunting and mystical.
29) The Goblin Spider, a legend from Japan.
Raiko, the famous samurai, is sent by the lord to kill a ferocious goblin that is shaped like a giant spider, and is terrorizing the countryside. On the way there, he is directed by the floating skull of a former victim of the spider. They find a deserted palace, inhabited by a creepy bug like ancient crone. She warns them away, then shifts into a mist and sinks through the floor as a legion of demons attack the samurai and his companion. They fight for hours, until the sun begins to rise, and the demons vanish. Then a beautiful pale maiden appears, but blinds them with unwholesome light, and shapeshifts into a creepy elongated monstrosity that oozes sticky white threads. She also changes to mist and seeps into the floor, and the samurai realize that she bleeds white sticky blood. The sun has fully risen, and now the samurai realize that there is a cavern or hollow beneath the flagstones. They pull them up, angering the mighty spider (who was the hag, and then the fair maiden) who attacks them brutally. The samurai fight valiantly, and finally slay the hellish spider beast, and take it's head back to court for their rewards.
Ew. Spiders.
30) The Halloween Pony, a folktale from France.
Grandmother warned the boys to stay inside on Halloween night, but the lively lads are determined to have some fun. They run out and find a neighbor's pony has gotten loose from it's pen. They all pile on, and strangely, even 4, 5, 6 and more boys seem to fit comfortably on the small pony. The pony doesn't even seem to mind the weight, and frolics and cavorts around, until he reaches the seaside, and the boys try to slow it down. It refuses, and they then try to dismount, but they're stuck. The boys can do nothing but watch in terror as the pony descends into the sea, and none of the village boys who were out that night were ever found.
So, the French version of kelpies, essentially. Plus a little morality guilt laid in on top.
I would have preferred this collection to stop at 28, and just skipped the spider and the silly morals, and ended on a high note with Lavender. Ahh well.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Storytelling: O'Sullivan Stew, by Hudson Talbott
I found this while searching for good St Paddy's Day books for storytime, and while it's way too long and convoluted for that use, I really enjoyed the story, and I liked that it was a newer book, and a more modern attempt to create a mythological-style Irish tall-tale. Also, the illustrations are fantastic!
O'Sullivan Stew
Hudson Talbott
ISBN: 0399231625
The King's men are stealing a beautiful stallion from the witch who lives on the beach, and Kate rushes into the village to get help for her, but the people demur, unwilling to face the King's wrath for a mere witch. This proves to be a mistake, as an angry and rejected witch causes misery after misery for the villagers, until Kate rallies her family to steal the horse back from the King, to give to the witch, to hopefully uncurse the village. Got it so far?
Sadly, Kate's family are terrible at horse theft, and they are summarily dragged before the King, who orders their execution, but Kate has been given the gift of blarney, and she's determined that her family will live. But will the yarns she spins out convince a skeptical King?
I have to say, that without the grand illustrations to carry the story, this wouldn't be nearly as fun and imaginative as it is. But with them, man oh man, this is a fun read. Kate is spunky and fun, the witch is justifiably angry at the stupid thoughtless villagers, and the King is increasingly incredulous at this loquacious upstart preventing him from dispensing justice. Everything of course ends well, and there is even an indication that Kate's blarney might actually be based on fact!
O'Sullivan Stew
Hudson Talbott
ISBN: 0399231625
The King's men are stealing a beautiful stallion from the witch who lives on the beach, and Kate rushes into the village to get help for her, but the people demur, unwilling to face the King's wrath for a mere witch. This proves to be a mistake, as an angry and rejected witch causes misery after misery for the villagers, until Kate rallies her family to steal the horse back from the King, to give to the witch, to hopefully uncurse the village. Got it so far?
Sadly, Kate's family are terrible at horse theft, and they are summarily dragged before the King, who orders their execution, but Kate has been given the gift of blarney, and she's determined that her family will live. But will the yarns she spins out convince a skeptical King?
I have to say, that without the grand illustrations to carry the story, this wouldn't be nearly as fun and imaginative as it is. But with them, man oh man, this is a fun read. Kate is spunky and fun, the witch is justifiably angry at the stupid thoughtless villagers, and the King is increasingly incredulous at this loquacious upstart preventing him from dispensing justice. Everything of course ends well, and there is even an indication that Kate's blarney might actually be based on fact!
Thursday, February 26, 2015
New Arrivals: Wordless Picture Book: Snowman's Story
This one is a real sweetheart, very retro.
Snowman's Story
Will Hillenbrand
ISBN: 9781477847879
Soft-edged pastels? watercolor pencils? lead us through a wordless tale of theft, ingenuity, and forgiveness.
This is a very sweet book to look through, and I wish I had the talent to use wordless books for storytimes.
Forest animals have gathered all the necessary ingredients for their magic, and they've made a Snowman to read them a story this wintry evening. After everyone's asleep, rabbit has a sneaky idea - and off he runs with the book! Snowman and furry friends in hot pursuit, they solve a series of "going on a bear hunt" level obstacles, and chase down rabbit at home, where the book is being enjoyed by a slew of rabbitlings. Awww. The book is returned, forgiveness granted, and a new set of animals (including the rabbit family this time) snuggles around Snowman for another story.
Snowman's Story
Will Hillenbrand
ISBN: 9781477847879
Soft-edged pastels? watercolor pencils? lead us through a wordless tale of theft, ingenuity, and forgiveness.
This is a very sweet book to look through, and I wish I had the talent to use wordless books for storytimes.
Forest animals have gathered all the necessary ingredients for their magic, and they've made a Snowman to read them a story this wintry evening. After everyone's asleep, rabbit has a sneaky idea - and off he runs with the book! Snowman and furry friends in hot pursuit, they solve a series of "going on a bear hunt" level obstacles, and chase down rabbit at home, where the book is being enjoyed by a slew of rabbitlings. Awww. The book is returned, forgiveness granted, and a new set of animals (including the rabbit family this time) snuggles around Snowman for another story.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Storytelling: "Chain" tales; The Scarecrow's Hat, by Ken Brown
The Scarecrow's Hat
Ken Brown
ISBN: 9781561452408
Picture Book: sketchy/blotchy vibrant watercolors illustrate the tireless "swapping" a hen does to secure a scarecrow's hat (swapping items from barnyard and forest animals) til she achieves her goal: a cozy nest.
This book is another that I need to be careful in using, because while I love this particular story dearly, I don't feel comfortable taking the story "as-is" from the lovely text and illustrations here. I feel like I can build up a knowledge base of similar "chain," "cumulative," or "circular" fairy and folk tales. With that background, I can then create a similar story with a more overt cultural background or setting. That way I will have a story that will be mine creatively, that I can tell (and screw up, and embellish, and cut down...) without feeling like I am disrespecting another artist's creation.
The story of The Scarecrow's Hat (as far as I can tell from limited research) is unique, but the concept of swapping items is not, and a visit to the "Chain of Deals" page on TV tropes shows us the concept is alive and well today. The oldest versions are folk-tales (Aarne-Thompson category 2030 "Chain" folktales) and a decently representative example can be found collected here and here.
What I find interesting about The Scarecrow's Hat specifically, and what I hope to incorporate into my own version, is the concept that the swapping is not punitive (there's lots of chain stories where the only thing being chained is threat of physical harm) nor is it "tricksy" where a character is purposefully trying to gain advantage over others, or play them for fools while he (usually a Clever Jack) comes out ahead. Instead, the hen is straightforward and perseverant, and her knowledge of the animals and their habits allows her to create a chain that is mutually beneficial and transparent (although none of the animals ask her WHY she is trading, or to whom).
My goals for the moment are to spend a lot of time with these chain tales, to research Appalachian mountain settings and local animals, and to use that research to create a similar mutually-beneficial chain of swaps that echoes the gentle, quietly clever, deeply persistent effort that the hen makes in The Scarecrow's Hat.
Ken Brown
ISBN: 9781561452408
Picture Book: sketchy/blotchy vibrant watercolors illustrate the tireless "swapping" a hen does to secure a scarecrow's hat (swapping items from barnyard and forest animals) til she achieves her goal: a cozy nest.
This book is another that I need to be careful in using, because while I love this particular story dearly, I don't feel comfortable taking the story "as-is" from the lovely text and illustrations here. I feel like I can build up a knowledge base of similar "chain," "cumulative," or "circular" fairy and folk tales. With that background, I can then create a similar story with a more overt cultural background or setting. That way I will have a story that will be mine creatively, that I can tell (and screw up, and embellish, and cut down...) without feeling like I am disrespecting another artist's creation.
The story of The Scarecrow's Hat (as far as I can tell from limited research) is unique, but the concept of swapping items is not, and a visit to the "Chain of Deals" page on TV tropes shows us the concept is alive and well today. The oldest versions are folk-tales (Aarne-Thompson category 2030 "Chain" folktales) and a decently representative example can be found collected here and here.
What I find interesting about The Scarecrow's Hat specifically, and what I hope to incorporate into my own version, is the concept that the swapping is not punitive (there's lots of chain stories where the only thing being chained is threat of physical harm) nor is it "tricksy" where a character is purposefully trying to gain advantage over others, or play them for fools while he (usually a Clever Jack) comes out ahead. Instead, the hen is straightforward and perseverant, and her knowledge of the animals and their habits allows her to create a chain that is mutually beneficial and transparent (although none of the animals ask her WHY she is trading, or to whom).
My goals for the moment are to spend a lot of time with these chain tales, to research Appalachian mountain settings and local animals, and to use that research to create a similar mutually-beneficial chain of swaps that echoes the gentle, quietly clever, deeply persistent effort that the hen makes in The Scarecrow's Hat.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Storytelling: Diamonds and Toads/Mother Hulda (fairy tale)
This one is another old favorite. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of fairy tales (you know you want to) this one is an Aarne-Thompson 480; "Kind and Unkind Girls" which should be subtitled "Who Get What They Richly Deserve."
The two classic versions are known as Diamonds and Toads and Mother Hulda, respectively.
In Diamonds and Toads, the youngest daughter of a widow is the only nice one in the family, and thus gets the short end of the stick, doing all the work. She's out at the well one day, and kindly draws extra water for an old beggar lady, who (of course) is a great fairy in disguise, and who blesses her for her kindness by decreeing that diamonds, pearls, and roses will fall from her lips every time she speaks. Despite the awkward nature of this gift, it's a lovely thought, and the girl's nasty mother thinks so as well. She sends the older, nastier sister out as well, but the girl is an idiot as well as mean, so the fairy curses her to drop toads and vipers from her mouth instead.
Mother Hulda is a bit more complicated. Instead of helping the beggar by the well, our virtuous heroine (this time a stepdaughter) jumps down the well after a fallen spindle, and ends up in a magical country where she finds everything in disarray, and industriously helps a lady sort things out. The lady is (of course) the fairy ruler of that realm, who covers her in gold and pops her back up the well back home, but the family can't remove the gold to steal it. So, stepmother shoves stepsister down the well, but the lazy girl doesn't bother to help (in some versions even actively opposes the lady just to be a brat), so the lady rolls her in pitch (tar) and returns her back home as well.
There's a delightful cajun-flavored version by the delightful duo of Robert D. San Souci and Jerry Pinkney, called The Talking Eggs, where it's set down in creole country, with a family of poor black women. The fairy lady now owns a strange farmstead out in the woods, and the wondrous items (that fall at the good girl's feet, not from her lips) are gained from magical eggs who kindly indicate their use, despite their appearances.
This one makes the list mainly because there is evidence of this tale being adapted by southerners, but what makes me most happy is that, again, this is a story of clever people (especially clever women) who are clever AND kind and generous, and who get rewarded for those qualities, while the less-smart, less-kind, and less-generous representatives ALSO get what's coming to them, but it's no-one's fault but their own.
I also like the idea, as in Little Gold Star, that bad behavior gets made physically obvious on the person, either permanently, or until they repent and behave better.
Finally, this one is another where there is no supernatural evil or "villain" to conquer, just an exploration of human nature and the consequences of selfish or hurtful behavior.
References:
Online:
Toads and Diamonds, via Project Gutenberg (from the Blue Fairy Book, collected/edited by Andrew Lang)
Annotated Diamonds and Toads via SurLaLune
Mother Hulda (Frau Holle) via SurLaLune
Mother Holle, via Project Gutenberg (from Fairy Tales, by the Brothers Grimm)
Picture Books:
Toads and Diamonds
Charlotte Huck, illustrated by Anita Lobel
ISBN: 9780688136802
The Talking Eggs
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
ISBN: 9780803706194
Others:
Toads and Diamonds
Heather Tomlinson
ISBN: 9780805089684
(Juvenile/Middle-Grade fiction, set in India)
The two classic versions are known as Diamonds and Toads and Mother Hulda, respectively.
In Diamonds and Toads, the youngest daughter of a widow is the only nice one in the family, and thus gets the short end of the stick, doing all the work. She's out at the well one day, and kindly draws extra water for an old beggar lady, who (of course) is a great fairy in disguise, and who blesses her for her kindness by decreeing that diamonds, pearls, and roses will fall from her lips every time she speaks. Despite the awkward nature of this gift, it's a lovely thought, and the girl's nasty mother thinks so as well. She sends the older, nastier sister out as well, but the girl is an idiot as well as mean, so the fairy curses her to drop toads and vipers from her mouth instead.
Mother Hulda is a bit more complicated. Instead of helping the beggar by the well, our virtuous heroine (this time a stepdaughter) jumps down the well after a fallen spindle, and ends up in a magical country where she finds everything in disarray, and industriously helps a lady sort things out. The lady is (of course) the fairy ruler of that realm, who covers her in gold and pops her back up the well back home, but the family can't remove the gold to steal it. So, stepmother shoves stepsister down the well, but the lazy girl doesn't bother to help (in some versions even actively opposes the lady just to be a brat), so the lady rolls her in pitch (tar) and returns her back home as well.
There's a delightful cajun-flavored version by the delightful duo of Robert D. San Souci and Jerry Pinkney, called The Talking Eggs, where it's set down in creole country, with a family of poor black women. The fairy lady now owns a strange farmstead out in the woods, and the wondrous items (that fall at the good girl's feet, not from her lips) are gained from magical eggs who kindly indicate their use, despite their appearances.
This one makes the list mainly because there is evidence of this tale being adapted by southerners, but what makes me most happy is that, again, this is a story of clever people (especially clever women) who are clever AND kind and generous, and who get rewarded for those qualities, while the less-smart, less-kind, and less-generous representatives ALSO get what's coming to them, but it's no-one's fault but their own.
I also like the idea, as in Little Gold Star, that bad behavior gets made physically obvious on the person, either permanently, or until they repent and behave better.
Finally, this one is another where there is no supernatural evil or "villain" to conquer, just an exploration of human nature and the consequences of selfish or hurtful behavior.
References:
Online:
Toads and Diamonds, via Project Gutenberg (from the Blue Fairy Book, collected/edited by Andrew Lang)
Annotated Diamonds and Toads via SurLaLune
Mother Hulda (Frau Holle) via SurLaLune
Mother Holle, via Project Gutenberg (from Fairy Tales, by the Brothers Grimm)
Picture Books:
Toads and Diamonds
Charlotte Huck, illustrated by Anita Lobel
ISBN: 9780688136802
The Talking Eggs
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
ISBN: 9780803706194
Others:
Toads and Diamonds
Heather Tomlinson
ISBN: 9780805089684
(Juvenile/Middle-Grade fiction, set in India)
Friday, October 24, 2014
Storytelling: The Buried Moon / The Dead Moon, English folktale
This story is usually called The Buried Moon. A version of this story appears online, on a page cataloging Joseph Jacobs' 1894 collection of English folk and fairy tales (More English Fairy Tales). It also appears as a picture book called The Buried Moon, with the language slightly simplified by Amanda Walsh, who also created haunting Steven-Kellog-ish twisty illustrations for it. Charles de Lint also has an homage-tale called The Moon is Drowning as I Sleep.
Like most stories I want to tell, this is a triumphant story, where good prevails due to bravery and cleverness. The fens (marshes) are dangerous places at night, except on the nights of the full moon. On those nights, the brightness drives the evil lurkers away, and lets travelers pass in safety, until one night when a traveler is led astray by a will-o-the-wisp. The moon pities him, and even though it isn't the night of the full moon, she comes down from the sky to lead him to safety. He is saved, but in her weakened state is caught in a snag, and captured and buried under a heavy stone by the vengeful evil lurkers, who are angry that she makes the night safe for humans once a month.
Now the humans have no moon at all, ever, and the fens crawl with evil, and anyone out after dark is lost. In despair, the villagers search through the whole town to find the last successful traveler, and with his memory and the advice of a wise-woman (cryptic as always; "search for a coffin, cross, and candle") the entire village arms themselves with light and heads into the deadly marshes at dusk of the next full-moon night to search. The moon is found under the stone (the coffin) marked by the snag that caught her (the cross) and lit by the triumphant will-o-the-wisp who sits there gloating every night (the candle). Once rescued, she rises up out of the night, and her brightness scalds the evil lurkers into nothing. Now the fens there, and the adjacent villages, are the safest places in England to be at night.
This one has a lot of potential. First, as a straightforward folk-tale, it packs a punch. Evil marsh-lurkers and people and beautiful lady moons getting dragged down into the muck and buried, tortured or eaten? Heck yes! The people also get mad props because they manage their rescue with cleverness and bravery, not with fairy tricks or magic assistance. Finally, the tragedy is a true tragedy. The moon is caught, not because she's vain or careless or stupid, but because she was trying to help someone despite being weak, and her true powers are revealed after she's rescued.
There's also a lot of potential to pad it out a bit. Does the moon save the traveler because she thinks he's handsome? Perhaps they are lovers? Perhaps the traveler himself is something supernatural, and that's why he tried to cross the fens after dark?
Why is this one village/town in the middle of fae-infested marshes? What sort of people live in a town like that? What if the old wise woman (or even most/all of the townspeople) were priestess or devotee of the moon?
What if the marshes were haunted by human spirits instead of / in addition to the original bogles, truckles, and kelpies?
What if the moon took the traveler back into the sky with her as she was rescued and left?
What if the fens were permanently brightened by moon-light, and that's the origins of fox-fire lights?
So much to play with, depending on audience and length needed.
Books and sources:
Wikipedia Article on The Buried Moon
The Buried Moon
Amanda Walsh
ISBN: 0395593492
More English Fairy Tales
The Buried Moon
Joseph Jacobs
"original" version from 1894 collection
Available online and on Project Gutenberg
The Moon is Drowing as I Sleep
Charles de Lint
Collected in:
Dreams Underfoot
ISBN: 9780765306791
and in
The Very Best of Charles de Lint
ISBN: 9781892391964
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Storytelling: Two of Everything (Chinese Folktale)
I first discovered this folktale through Cynthia DeFelice and Andrea U'Ren's delightful Irish-flavored homage One Potato, Two Potato.
The basic story is simple; a lonely impoverished peasant farmer discovers a magic pot in his fields, digs it up and carries it home. Usually he throws something inside the pot to help him carry everything. Once he gets home, he's simply happy about the free pot, but his clever wife realizes that the item he threw into the pot has doubled, and they set about doubling the little bits of things they own, working hard to grow more prosperous, and eventually (through mishap or purpose) doubling themselves to provide company and extra hands to share work.
It's a sweet story, with no real villains or unfortunate events, other than the poverty and loneliness which are overcome during the story itself. I rather like that about the story, because it puts the focus on the delight of having more after having had so little for so long. It also illustrates how quickly everything multiplies, using simple mundane items like candlesticks or kindling wood or potatoes.
The implications are that these farmers are clever enough and humble enough to enjoy the magic of the pot without screwing themselves over like The Fisherman's Wife does. Also, unlike Why The Sea is Salt, or another Chinese folktale called the Magic Pot (The Runaway Wok) there's no trick to use, or an evil/trickster spirit that requires cleverness to outwit or that inflicts damage on neighbors/enemies. It also has echoes of Stone Soup, in that it illustrates quite vividly that starting with next-to-nothing isn't quite the same as starting with absolutely nothing, and that companionship and generosity are intrinsic to human nature.
Related picture books to use for thematic, comparative, or contrasting concepts:
One Potato, Two Potato
Cynthia DeFelice, illustrated by Andrea U'Ren
ISBN: 0374356408
Two of Everything
Lily Toy Hong
ISBN: 0807581577
The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale
Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Sebastia Serra
ISBN: 9780525420682
Stone Soup
John J. Muth
ISBN: 9780439339094
The Magic Fish
Freya Littledale, illustrated Winslow Pinney Pels
ISBN: 9780590411004
A Catfish Tale: A Bayou Story of the Fisherman and his Wife
Whitney Stewart, illustrated by Gerald Guerlais
ISBN: 9780807510988
The basic story is simple; a lonely impoverished peasant farmer discovers a magic pot in his fields, digs it up and carries it home. Usually he throws something inside the pot to help him carry everything. Once he gets home, he's simply happy about the free pot, but his clever wife realizes that the item he threw into the pot has doubled, and they set about doubling the little bits of things they own, working hard to grow more prosperous, and eventually (through mishap or purpose) doubling themselves to provide company and extra hands to share work.
It's a sweet story, with no real villains or unfortunate events, other than the poverty and loneliness which are overcome during the story itself. I rather like that about the story, because it puts the focus on the delight of having more after having had so little for so long. It also illustrates how quickly everything multiplies, using simple mundane items like candlesticks or kindling wood or potatoes.
The implications are that these farmers are clever enough and humble enough to enjoy the magic of the pot without screwing themselves over like The Fisherman's Wife does. Also, unlike Why The Sea is Salt, or another Chinese folktale called the Magic Pot (The Runaway Wok) there's no trick to use, or an evil/trickster spirit that requires cleverness to outwit or that inflicts damage on neighbors/enemies. It also has echoes of Stone Soup, in that it illustrates quite vividly that starting with next-to-nothing isn't quite the same as starting with absolutely nothing, and that companionship and generosity are intrinsic to human nature.
Related picture books to use for thematic, comparative, or contrasting concepts:
One Potato, Two Potato
Cynthia DeFelice, illustrated by Andrea U'Ren
ISBN: 0374356408
Two of Everything
Lily Toy Hong
ISBN: 0807581577
The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale
Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Sebastia Serra
ISBN: 9780525420682
Stone Soup
John J. Muth
ISBN: 9780439339094
The Magic Fish
Freya Littledale, illustrated Winslow Pinney Pels
ISBN: 9780590411004
A Catfish Tale: A Bayou Story of the Fisherman and his Wife
Whitney Stewart, illustrated by Gerald Guerlais
ISBN: 9780807510988
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Storytelling: Flossie and the Fox, Patricia McKissack (Red Riding Hood)
You might have noticed by now that I enjoy slightly non-standard fairy-tales, or at least versions of them that are enriched by new environments and cultures. Another classic Southern version of a fairy tale that I would dearly love to tell is a version of Red Riding Hood called Flossie and the Fox, put into beautiful picture book form by Patricia McKissack and illustrated by Rachel Isadora. If you've never read it, I encourage you do check it out; it's a perfect blend of cheeky humor and serious storytelling chops.
According to the book itself, this version was told to Ms McKissack when she was a child, by her own storytelling grandfather. More in-depth research is going to be needed to discover whether that story was his alone, or (as I suspect) a "local" version that reflected the lives and circumstances of the people living in that time and place. I'm really hoping that it turns out to be the latter, so that I can help spread the story along myself in the future.
Much like Red Riding Hood in the classic story, Flossie is a young girl who is tasked with traveling though the woods alone with a basket. The circumstances and the heroine of this story are quite different, and that's why I like it so much. In Red Riding Hood, Red is an innocent, and she's totally taken in by the wolf, and too stupid (or innocent) to notice the dramatic and pointed differences in dear old granny. This of course culminates in the ending where both Red and granny have to be saved by a third party introduced for that sole purpose. None of that passive innocence here - Flossie is a force to be reckoned with.
Like Red, she is carrying a basket, but in Flossie's case, taking eggs to a neighbor whose hens have been scared off of laying by a roaming fox. Now, Flossie holds that she's never seen a fox before, but she's perfectly willing to do the neighborly thing and make sure those eggs get to the neighbor.
Once in the woods, our fox approaches, but unlike dear sweet innocent Red Riding Hood, Flossie has this encounter (and the several which follow) totally under control. Her sweet innocent game completely sideswipes the poncy fox, who is distraught that this slip of a girl won't believe he is even a fox, let alone that she should be afraid of him! He brings in various other animals to help plead his case, but the girl stubbornly refuses to see reason - that is, until the neighbor's house (and the resident hunting dogs) comes into sight, and the dogs recognize the fox perfectly well. Isadora's final illustration of Flossie's bright grin is a perfect ending to the picture book, making sure readers are in on the joke.
I hope that I can find some alternate versions of this story, because between the plucky clever heroine and the gorgeous Southern idioms, I really want to tell this story over and over and over again.
Flossie and the Fox
Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Rachel Isadora
ISBN: 0803702507
According to the book itself, this version was told to Ms McKissack when she was a child, by her own storytelling grandfather. More in-depth research is going to be needed to discover whether that story was his alone, or (as I suspect) a "local" version that reflected the lives and circumstances of the people living in that time and place. I'm really hoping that it turns out to be the latter, so that I can help spread the story along myself in the future.
Much like Red Riding Hood in the classic story, Flossie is a young girl who is tasked with traveling though the woods alone with a basket. The circumstances and the heroine of this story are quite different, and that's why I like it so much. In Red Riding Hood, Red is an innocent, and she's totally taken in by the wolf, and too stupid (or innocent) to notice the dramatic and pointed differences in dear old granny. This of course culminates in the ending where both Red and granny have to be saved by a third party introduced for that sole purpose. None of that passive innocence here - Flossie is a force to be reckoned with.
Like Red, she is carrying a basket, but in Flossie's case, taking eggs to a neighbor whose hens have been scared off of laying by a roaming fox. Now, Flossie holds that she's never seen a fox before, but she's perfectly willing to do the neighborly thing and make sure those eggs get to the neighbor.
Once in the woods, our fox approaches, but unlike dear sweet innocent Red Riding Hood, Flossie has this encounter (and the several which follow) totally under control. Her sweet innocent game completely sideswipes the poncy fox, who is distraught that this slip of a girl won't believe he is even a fox, let alone that she should be afraid of him! He brings in various other animals to help plead his case, but the girl stubbornly refuses to see reason - that is, until the neighbor's house (and the resident hunting dogs) comes into sight, and the dogs recognize the fox perfectly well. Isadora's final illustration of Flossie's bright grin is a perfect ending to the picture book, making sure readers are in on the joke.
I hope that I can find some alternate versions of this story, because between the plucky clever heroine and the gorgeous Southern idioms, I really want to tell this story over and over and over again.
Flossie and the Fox
Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Rachel Isadora
ISBN: 0803702507
Friday, October 3, 2014
Storytelling: The White Cat (fairy tale)
If you're unfamiliar with this story, you ought to check it out. It's a lovely story, and I am continually shocked that it doesn't get turned into a movie or a longer story more often than it has. A couple of good classic versions of it are found on SurLaLune's fairy tale site (a delightful website in general) the first from Andrew Lang's "Color" Fairy Books, in the 1889 Blue book, specifically. Another practically identical version comes from Madame d'Aulnoy in 1892.
One picture book version that I don't totally hate is:
The White Cat
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Gennady Spirin
ISBN: 9780531071700
I'm actually sad that I don't like this version more - between San Souci and Spirin, you'd think it would be right up my alley, but it's just a little too stiff and formal and sepia-toned for me to truly adore.
My all-time favorite version of the story is found in a collection.
A Book of Fairy Tales (Published by Dean's in 1977)
The story itself is the Madame d'Aulnoy version, dated from 1682 (the original French edition) and the illustrations are by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.
This is a lovely book in general, and the illustrations are PHENOMENAL. This was the picture book of fairy tales that I first had as a child, and I love the elegant willowy characters and draping finery.
Short Version:
King has three sons, all decent and good, and only one kingdom. It's small, so breaking it up isn't really an option, and he really doesn't want to abdicate or get killed quite yet, so he figures he'll keep them busy with crazy quests to complete, vowing to give the kingdom to whoever best fills his requests, basically hoping for some time to rule in peace while they're all gallivanting around the kingdom.
First test: he wants a beautiful little dog. They have a year. Youngest prince hares about buying pretty dogs until he gets lost in a great wood and finds an enchanted castle, where he gets drugged and spends his year being entertained by a retinue of lovely cats. At the end of the year, he is reminded that he has to go back to the king with a dog, but the lady of the castle gives him an acorn with a tiny dog inside. Obviously the King thinks the tiny dog is a marvel, but he's still happy ruling, so...
Second test: a sheet of muslin thin and fine enough to draw through the eye of a needle. The prince is no slouch, and figures that if a tiny magic dog inside an acorn is no biggie, obviously this will be a piece of cake too, and besides this way he can spend his year being entertained by the Court of Cats and the lovely Lady of Cats. He does, they do, and a the end of the year, she gives him a walnut (but the cloth is actually inside a nested series of smaller nuts and seeds). Again, the other two princes have done amazingly well, and have actually found materials that can meet the condition, just barely, but the magic cloth is overwhelmingly amazing. The king is getting a bit worried, so he proposes a final test.
Last test: a beautiful princess to become queen. Prince heads back to the magic castle, and at the end of the year, the White Cat demands that if he loves her, and he wants to help her, he has to cut off her head. He does so, and voila! Beautiful enchanted princess! She tells her life story (Mom essentially went Rapunzel on the fairies, and they did the Rapunzel in the tower plot, but instead of the wandering in the woods blind ending, THAT Prince got eaten by a dragon, and the fairies turned the Princess into a White Cat when she refused their suggested suitor; the King of the Dwarves.) They both return to the old King, and glory be, she's got NINE kingdoms that she inherited from her parents, as well as scads of fairy wealth from her adopted parents, so the old King can continue with his own kingdom in peace, and she'll even give the other brothers their own kingdoms into the bargain.
Finis.
What I love most about this story is that instead of the Beauty and the Beast idea where a prince is changed into a beast through his own evil nature and must be "tamed" by love and kindness (his own or other's, depending on the story) this one has more of a Rapunzel flair to it, where the desires of the parents (and the subsequent stubborn refusal of the princess to marry the King of the Dwarves) are the cause of the transformation, and the Princess, although trapped as a cat, and restricted to the castle, is able to perform useful magics for the Prince, even if she can't break her own enchantment.
Now, as a story, I think it has some minor issues. It's pretty obviously sexist, and there are places where the story-book logic hangs a little bit thin, but overall it's delightful, rarely seen in picture books or in novelizations or adaptations, and has a beautiful castle filled with magical cats that fulfill wishes. What more could you want?
If I work on this story, I have a feeling I'm going to make the king's tests coincide with a set of tests from the White Cat to see if the prince is worthy (instead of just being told that he is worthy) to make a nice Weave of Words/Clever Anaeet parallel between the obviously bogus requests of the king to take up time and energy, and the actual clever and telling tests of the White Cat to show the prince's character and abilities.
I'm unsure about the brothers. On the one hand, it's nice to see siblings that get along well, but on the other hand it could be a nice callback to Cinderella to have step-siblings that dislike or try to sabotage the younger Prince.
Likewise, the backstory of the princess and how she got turned into a cat will be an interesting puzzle. The Rapunzel portion with her mother's cravings and her growing up with the fairies and then being locked into a tower is a full fairy-tale on it's own, and that's not even getting into the potential for storytelling that marrying the King of the Dwarves has. That part links back into Thumbelina thematically, with the girl not wanting to marry the mole and live forever in the dank darkness. Perhaps some of the "entertainments" that the cats present to the Prince can be these fairy tales acted out for him, and he slowly realizes that they're a history of someone.
I'm excited about this one, although part of me wants to save my creative energy here and try to create it as a longer novel or story. I just want to see it become more common and appreciated.
One picture book version that I don't totally hate is:
The White Cat
Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Gennady Spirin
ISBN: 9780531071700
I'm actually sad that I don't like this version more - between San Souci and Spirin, you'd think it would be right up my alley, but it's just a little too stiff and formal and sepia-toned for me to truly adore.
My all-time favorite version of the story is found in a collection.
A Book of Fairy Tales (Published by Dean's in 1977)
The story itself is the Madame d'Aulnoy version, dated from 1682 (the original French edition) and the illustrations are by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone.
This is a lovely book in general, and the illustrations are PHENOMENAL. This was the picture book of fairy tales that I first had as a child, and I love the elegant willowy characters and draping finery.
Short Version:
King has three sons, all decent and good, and only one kingdom. It's small, so breaking it up isn't really an option, and he really doesn't want to abdicate or get killed quite yet, so he figures he'll keep them busy with crazy quests to complete, vowing to give the kingdom to whoever best fills his requests, basically hoping for some time to rule in peace while they're all gallivanting around the kingdom.
First test: he wants a beautiful little dog. They have a year. Youngest prince hares about buying pretty dogs until he gets lost in a great wood and finds an enchanted castle, where he gets drugged and spends his year being entertained by a retinue of lovely cats. At the end of the year, he is reminded that he has to go back to the king with a dog, but the lady of the castle gives him an acorn with a tiny dog inside. Obviously the King thinks the tiny dog is a marvel, but he's still happy ruling, so...
Second test: a sheet of muslin thin and fine enough to draw through the eye of a needle. The prince is no slouch, and figures that if a tiny magic dog inside an acorn is no biggie, obviously this will be a piece of cake too, and besides this way he can spend his year being entertained by the Court of Cats and the lovely Lady of Cats. He does, they do, and a the end of the year, she gives him a walnut (but the cloth is actually inside a nested series of smaller nuts and seeds). Again, the other two princes have done amazingly well, and have actually found materials that can meet the condition, just barely, but the magic cloth is overwhelmingly amazing. The king is getting a bit worried, so he proposes a final test.
Last test: a beautiful princess to become queen. Prince heads back to the magic castle, and at the end of the year, the White Cat demands that if he loves her, and he wants to help her, he has to cut off her head. He does so, and voila! Beautiful enchanted princess! She tells her life story (Mom essentially went Rapunzel on the fairies, and they did the Rapunzel in the tower plot, but instead of the wandering in the woods blind ending, THAT Prince got eaten by a dragon, and the fairies turned the Princess into a White Cat when she refused their suggested suitor; the King of the Dwarves.) They both return to the old King, and glory be, she's got NINE kingdoms that she inherited from her parents, as well as scads of fairy wealth from her adopted parents, so the old King can continue with his own kingdom in peace, and she'll even give the other brothers their own kingdoms into the bargain.
Finis.
What I love most about this story is that instead of the Beauty and the Beast idea where a prince is changed into a beast through his own evil nature and must be "tamed" by love and kindness (his own or other's, depending on the story) this one has more of a Rapunzel flair to it, where the desires of the parents (and the subsequent stubborn refusal of the princess to marry the King of the Dwarves) are the cause of the transformation, and the Princess, although trapped as a cat, and restricted to the castle, is able to perform useful magics for the Prince, even if she can't break her own enchantment.
Now, as a story, I think it has some minor issues. It's pretty obviously sexist, and there are places where the story-book logic hangs a little bit thin, but overall it's delightful, rarely seen in picture books or in novelizations or adaptations, and has a beautiful castle filled with magical cats that fulfill wishes. What more could you want?
If I work on this story, I have a feeling I'm going to make the king's tests coincide with a set of tests from the White Cat to see if the prince is worthy (instead of just being told that he is worthy) to make a nice Weave of Words/Clever Anaeet parallel between the obviously bogus requests of the king to take up time and energy, and the actual clever and telling tests of the White Cat to show the prince's character and abilities.
I'm unsure about the brothers. On the one hand, it's nice to see siblings that get along well, but on the other hand it could be a nice callback to Cinderella to have step-siblings that dislike or try to sabotage the younger Prince.
Likewise, the backstory of the princess and how she got turned into a cat will be an interesting puzzle. The Rapunzel portion with her mother's cravings and her growing up with the fairies and then being locked into a tower is a full fairy-tale on it's own, and that's not even getting into the potential for storytelling that marrying the King of the Dwarves has. That part links back into Thumbelina thematically, with the girl not wanting to marry the mole and live forever in the dank darkness. Perhaps some of the "entertainments" that the cats present to the Prince can be these fairy tales acted out for him, and he slowly realizes that they're a history of someone.
I'm excited about this one, although part of me wants to save my creative energy here and try to create it as a longer novel or story. I just want to see it become more common and appreciated.
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