Fantasy Coach, by Posh Tots

Being pregnant (I’m 9 weeks along on Wednesday), I find my focus strays a lot. When I am able to work sans migraine, I’m often thinking about potato chips, or throwing up, or, most often, how much longer it’ll be ’til I can take a nap. My sister-in-law meantimes, also pregnant (with twins, no less), is already starting the shopping for her little beans. Which of course made me wonder – what’s a fairy tale loving girl to do for baby shopping? I mean, there are jungle themes and sailing themes, hearts and woodland furniture. And sure, there are cute little jumpsuits with fairies and birds on them, and a whole line of winsome Disney Princess things for those so inclined. But what about real fairy tale stuff?

And then I remembered Posh Tots. Don’t get me wrong – I won’t be spending $47,000 on this Cinderella carriage any time soon (, but it does give a whole new meaning to fairy tale baby shopping, doesn’t it?

Fairy Tale Birth Announcement, by bndesigns

And then there’s Etsy. Want a fairy tale birth announcement? Have a look at “Emma”, from bndesigns, an Etsy shop specialising in stationery. Complete with gorgeous scripting, this announcement reminds me of a few illuminated pages just waiting to be read.

Fairy Tale Bassinet, by Celestina Small

Think fairy tale stuff is girly? Check out this princely blue bassinet by the talented Celestina Small. Picture-perfect in a garden setting, it’s easy to imagine a royal baby shower, complete with the “magnificent cover[s] with a case of massive gold, wherein were a spoon, knife, and fork, all of pure gold set with diamonds and rubies,” from “Sleeping Beauty“.

Ah, time to go. I have a sudden yen for potato chips and chocolate milk.

*

There was once an old castle in the midst of a large and thick forest, and in it an old woman who was a witch dwelt all alone. In the day-time she changed herself into a cat or a screech-owl, but in the evening she took her proper shape again as a human being. She could lure wild beasts and birds to her, and then she killed and boiled and roasted them. If any one came within one hundred paces of the castle he was obliged to stand still, and could not stir from the place until she bade him be free. But whenever an innocent maiden came within this circle, she changed her into a bird, and shut her up in a wicker-work cage, and carried the cage into a room in the castle. She had about seven thousand cages of rare birds in the castle.
Now, there was once a maiden who was called Jorinda, who was fairer than all other girls. She and a handsome youth named Joringel had promised to marry each other. They were still in the days of betrothal, and their greatest happiness was being together. One day in order that they might be able to talk together in quiet they went for a walk in the forest. “Take care,” said Joringel, “that you do not go too near the castle.”

It was a beautiful evening; the sun shone brightly between the trunks of the trees into the dark green of the forest, and the turtle-doves sang mournfully upon the young boughs of the birch-trees.

Jorinda wept now and then: she sat down in the sunshine and was sorrowful. Joringel was sorrowful too; they were as sad as if they were about to die. Then they looked around them, and were quite at a loss, for they did not know by which way they should go home. The sun was still half above the mountain and half set.

Joringel looked through the bushes, and saw the old walls of the castle close at hand. He was horror-stricken and filled with deadly fear. Jorinda was singing,

“My little bird, with the necklace red,
Sings sorrow, sorrow, sorrow,
He sings that the dove must soon be dead,
Sings sorrow, sor — jug, jug, jug.”

Joringel looked for Jorinda. She was changed into a nightingale, and sang, “jug, jug, jug.” A screech-owl with glowing eyes flew three times round about her, and three times cried, “to-whoo, to-whoo, to-whoo!”

Joringel could not move: he stood there like a stone, and could neither weep nor speak, nor move hand or foot.

The sun had now set. The owl flew into the thicket, and directly afterwards there came out of it a crooked old woman, yellow and lean, with large red eyes and a hooked nose, the point of which reached to her chin. She muttered to herself, caught the nightingale, and took it away in her hand.

Joringel could neither speak nor move from the spot; the nightingale was gone. At last the woman came back, and said in a hollow voice, “Greet thee, Zachiel. If the moon shines on the cage, Zachiel, let him loose at once.” Then Joringel was freed. He fell on his knees before the woman and begged that she would give him back his Jorinda, but she said that he should never have her again, and went away. He called, he wept, he lamented, but all in vain,”Ah, what is to become of me?”

Joringel went away, and at last came to a strange village; there he kept sheep for a long time. He often walked round and round the castle, but not too near to it. At last he dreamt one night that he found a blood-red flower, in the middle of which was a beautiful large pearl; that he picked the flower and went with it to the castle, and that everything he touched with the flower was freed from enchantment; he also dreamt that by means of it he recovered his Jorinda.

In the morning, when he awoke, he began to seek over hill and dale if he could find such a flower. He sought until the ninth day, and then, early in the morning, he found the blood-red flower. In the middle of it there was a large dew-drop, as big as the finest pearl.

Day and night he journeyed with this flower to the castle. When he was within a hundred paces of it he was not held fast, but walked on to the door. Joringel was full of joy; he touched the door with the flower, and it sprang open. He walked in through the courtyard, and listened for the sound of the birds. At last he heard it. He went on and found the room from whence it came, and there the witch was feeding the birds in the seven thousand cages.

When she saw Joringel she was angry, very angry, and scolded and spat poison and gall at him, but she could not come within two paces of him. He did not take any notice of her, but went and looked at the cages with the birds; but there were many hundred nightingales, how was he to find his Jorinda again?

Just then he saw the old woman quietly take away a cage with a bird in it, and go towards the door.

Swiftly he sprang towards her, touched the cage with the flower, and also the old woman. She could now no longer bewitch any one; and Jorinda was standing there, clasping him round the neck, and she was as beautiful as ever!

From Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.

The merciless Macdonwald,

Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

The multiplying villainies of nature

Do swarm upon him, from the Western isles

Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied…

Macbeth, (1.2.7-11)

Finally, it’s here [alack, alas, the interwebs have been uncooperative today, but Joe says we're working on Mountain Time today] – our interview with Maggie Stiefvater! Listen to Maggie read us a section from Lament, then talk about writing, art, and her neurotic dog.

The fairy tales mentioned in the podcast will be up tomorrow; Lament will be available at Borders next Tuesday, and Barnes and Noble on the 28th. Can’t wait that long? Order it from Amazonnow!

Something uplifting to get us into the swing of things for a new week:

I’ve just started the latest offering from Maggie Stiefvater, “Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception”. So far I’ve met Deirdre Monaghan and a handsome–perhaps Victorian–boy, Luke Dillon, from her dream, who demands greatness from her.

“Do you know how some people can do anything?”

I opened my eyes. I realized he was waiting for me to lead the way to the auditorium, so I started walking up the stairs. “What do you mean?”

As we got closer to the auditorium, there were more students waiting in the halls, all talking noisily, but I heard Luke’s voice behind me without difficulty. “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.”

“Uh, not really,” I said. “Except for on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Do you know anyone who can do that?”

Luke’s voice dipped. “I’d ask them to do a few miracles for me if I did.”

It got me thinking – who am I going to demand greatness from this week? – and who will demand it from me?

Read the prologue and first chapter now.

Read the Les Bonnes Fees review of Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception here.

And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for mp3 downloads of Maggie’s Lament inspired soundtrack!

(Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Stiefvater © 2008. Flux, an imprint of Llewellyn Publishing 2043 Wooddale Drive, Woodbury, MN 55125. Used with the permission and best wishes of the publisher. All rights reserved.)

]]> http://les-bonnes-fees.com/wordpress/2008/09/exerpt-from-lament/feed/ 0 http://les-bonnes-fees.com/wordpress/2008/09/once-upon-a-time-a-fairy-tale-quiz/ http://les-bonnes-fees.com/wordpress/2008/09/once-upon-a-time-a-fairy-tale-quiz/#comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:49:20 +0000 Peta Andersen http://lesbonnesfees.wordpress.com/?p=116 From Mental Floss.com:

I’ve been–and still am–away. I wish I could say I’m off on a fairy tale fact finding mission, but I’m not. Well, not really. I am busy talking to people, searching out literature, and generally doing things for Les Bonnes Fees at the moment. But, because I’ve been travelling, my internet access has been patchy, so I haven’t been able to post much.

A general update–our water theme has been working out rather well, though I’m still looking for non-fiction and poetry. We work with google documents mostly, too, but there have been some issues with that lately so, if you haven’t heard from us, don’t panic. We are reading submissions, and we are sending out .rtf and .pdf notes and comments. Some of these emails will be coming from others on the Fees team due to my woeful lack of regular internet access, but I do see everything that comes in.

And the next issue? There’s no real theme as yet, but I’ve been seeing a lot of Hansel and Gretel works lately, so perhaps there’ll be something in that. Maybe something not quite as specific as that, but a theme to do with eating, or manipulation, or even mother and father figures…what do you think? Comment and let us know!

I’ll be posting a bit more about Rampion in the Belltower tomorrow (Australian time), as the lovely Merrie Haskell has written a bit about how she came to write the story. ‘Til then!

Rumpelstiltskin, the fairy-tale rogue who spun straw into gold, has nothing on Miguel Yacaman and Jorge Gardea-Torresdey.

The two University of Texas researchers have developed a way to draw gold from wheat, alfalfa, or – best of all – oats.

No spinning wheel required. In this day and age, a simple solvent will suffice to turn homely vegetation into a source of precious metals.

But if you’re thinking of quitting the day job and buying an alfalfa farm, don’t be too hasty. The quantities of gold at stake won’t quickly cover the cost of a harvesting combine.

The yields, in fact, are microscopic. The gold appears as particles mere billionths of a meter wide…[more]

Not quite the stuff of fairy tales, but interesting nonetheless!

Then, during my escape to an air-conditioned coffee shop this morning (it’s 33 C as I write this), I discovered a New York Times Book Review, pages still unsmeared and just itching to be read. Within, a review of the new Rushdie book.

David Geter, The New York Times Book Review:

From the very beginning of his new novel, “The Enchantress of Florence,” Salman Rushdie plunges us into a world of marvels: “In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. … Perhaps (the traveler surmised) the fountain of eternal youth lay within the city walls — perhaps even the legendary doorway to Paradise on Earth was somewhere close at hand? But then the sun fell below the horizon, the gold sank beneath the water’s surface, and was lost. Mermaids and serpents would guard it until the return of daylight.” And sure enough, that’s where he began to lose me. I’m probably not Rushdie’s target audience: in literature, at least, I find the marvelous tedious, and the tedious — as rendered by a Beckett or a Raymond Carver or even a Kafka — marvelous. But if I can upset myself over the plight of a traveling salesman who wakes up one morning as a bug, why did this ingenious and ambitious novel — no less than a defense of the human imagination — leave me unmoved? [more]

Still interested? Read the first chapter here.

Will I still read the book? Probably. Enchantress falls within the looser bounds of fairy tale literature. But, based on the first chapter, I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

spent the better part of today marking up pages for Fees. I’ve never liked tweaking code, but a very fun part of making the pages is finding graphics. While trying to find an illustration, or a piece of clip art suitable for Merrie Haskell’s Rampion in the Belltower (more on this soon, and be sure to keep an eye out for Merrie talking about her experience as a carillonneur interest in carillons), I stumbled upon this site, a clipart library provided by the folks at Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse.

Of genus Amaryllis- A genus of bulbous plants, natural order amaryllidac?, with large, bright colored, lily-shaped flowers upon a stout scape—Whitney, 1902.

All the images are in the public domain, and most of them appear to come from some lovely-sounding old books. This illustration of belladonna, for instance, is from William Dwight Whitney, The Century Dictionary, an Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language (New York: The Century Co., 1902).

These images of dragonflies, too, are so pretty that I think I may be actively searching for something dragonfly related soon!

And then there’s the fairy tale art. A quick search yields 78 records for tower, while decorative letters, famous people, and literary characters each have their own category.

Fairy tale, meantime, returns 158 results, including illustrations (see below), borders, and letter art. Images are available as .gif or .tiff, and instructions on downloads and use are provided at the bottom of each page.

And finally, an image to catch your fancy on a late Tuesday night…

The Fox’s Brush

From The Brothers Grimm and Louis Rhead, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Stories and Tales of Elves, Goblins, and Fairies (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1917)

That is essentially the premise behind Bill Willingham’s multi-award winning series “Fables”. Old King Cole is Mayor of Fable Town, Snow White his deputy. The Big Bad Wolf is the sheriff of Fable town and Prince Charming is a charming, womanizing cad, with a string of ex-wives including Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

This first collection starts with the very suspicious disappearance of Rose Red – Snow White’s slightly less famous (and not-so-upstanding) sister – from the apartment she shares with Jack (yes, that Jack, the one from all the stories) in very suspicious circumstances.

Part whimsy, part detective thriller, Legends in Exile is a tremendous beginning to a series that goes from strength to strength.

One small word of warning though – despite the fairytale nature of the protagonists, there is enough violence and adult themes in this book that you will want to check it out before buying it for a young reader.

Fables V.1 Legends in Exiles (Bill Willingham)

By way of honest disclosure – the above link, like essentially all Amazon.com links on Les Bonnes Fees is an affiliate link. Les Bonnes Fees makes a small commission on any purchases you might make via that link.