Memes Archive

Fairy Tale Friday: The Butterfly

It’s so refreshing, not to mention exciting, to get to do a fairy tale that I have not heard of, seen, read or knew about before today. I feel like I’m walking in fresh snow as I sit down to write this post, and that’s a good thing! Most fairy tales are very, very old and have been around for centuries. They’ve been picked apart and put back together in new ways, they’ve been discussed, debated, banned and treasured by generations of people from all over the world. With Hans Christian Andersen most of his fairy tales are wholey original. They have only been around a mere hundred years or so and some of his fairy tales have simply seemed to drop through the cracks and probably won’t be picked up again for another hundred years or so, if ever. “The Butterfly” is one of those seemingly forgotten stories.

Fairy Tale Friday: New Modern Versions

I first started reading modern takes on classic fairy tales in Junior High when I stumbled across Terri Windling for the first time in the adult fantasy section. Terri Windling is a fantasy writer and editor who has contributed to a lot of great projects including quite a few that involve rewritten fairy tales!

My favorite works, that both Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow collaborated as editors on, would be the six volumes of short stories that are all made up of re-told fairy tales, or as they call it, “our series of fairy tales for adults.” They have gone out of print, half were republished, and those are now slowly going out of print again but I simply love this series and am determined to get a full set one day!

The books in the series are:

• Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears
• Black Thorn, White Rose
• Silver Birch, Blood Moon
• Black Heart, Ivory Bones
• Snow White, Blood Red
• Black Swan, White Raven

I reviewed one of the books, Black Heart, Ivory Bones, a while ago and it was just as wonderful as I had remembered it! I really wish they would come out with a matching set so that I can collect all six in the same binding. (I have three, two paperback and one in library binding from the first printing).

I did read all six when the library near where I grew up had them. They completely changed how I viewed fairy tales and are probably responsible for kindling the spark that grew into my life long love affair with them. If you can get a hold of a copy of any of these at the library or see one at a used book store, snag it! You won’t regret that you did.

See? I can write a short Fairy Tale Friday after all! As an aside I also recommend any and all of the books on my blog with the fairy tale tag. Yes, I read so many they require their own tag!

Fairy Tale Friday: Little Red Riding Hood

I’m just going to start off by saying that Little Red Riding Hood is one of my absolute favorite fairy tales of all time. I ended up writing an end of term paper just on the history of this one fairy tale and had so much fun writing it! So, for this week’s fairy tale friday I’m including it below. This really goes beyond just talking about the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood and gets into fairy tales and their constantly shifting and changing impact on society, and particularly the impact of Little Red Riding Hood on society from the Middle Ages to present day.

Keep in mind this essay is a little dated, I wrote it back in 2003. I fixed some errors, but for the most part I left it unchanged. As for all the pictures, if it’s click-able it can pop to a bigger image if you want a closer look at some of the versions of Red. Also, because this is an older essay, I don’t talk at all about the resurgence of werewolf popularity in YA novels nowadays. Though, if I were to hazard a guess off the cuff from what little I have read, it seems to me the new wave is more about “taming the wolf” than tempting him. It’s more of that whole unhealthy obsession some young women and girls get thinking that they can take a violent and abusive man and change him if they only just “loved him enough”. Gratifyingly at least some of these wolves do want to change in the first place so at least there is that going for them.

Musing Mondays – Upcoming Read-a-Thon

 

I am very excited about the upcoming read-a-thon. I participated unofficially in the one last October and used it as a chance to get all caught up on my back-log of reviews (somewhere in the double digits). I then went on to participate in a different one in December. It was loads of fun and I can’t wait to participate in this one!

Like last time I really want to try and stay up the whole 24 hours. I have no idea if this will work or not, but it sounds like a lot of fun and I want to go for it again! As far as the books I have chosen, whew, I went crazy and chose a lot!

Fairy Tale Friday: Rapunzel

This is a fairy tale I’ve been hearing a lot more about ever since Disney announced it was going to come out with a movie about her. Especially since it was supposed to be a) part of the new Disney Renaissance (they are releasing a fairy tale film every year for the next ten years, starting with the Princess and the Frog) and b) use a new animation technique. CG technology has come to the point where “the computer can finally bend it’s knee to the artist” so the Rapunzel movie is going to be more like a CG painting, not CG cartoon-realism which is all that was possible before.

I was a little surprised that Disney went for such a film, first off because of the themes in Rapunzel (lust, primarily) and secondly, well, just look at the art piece they are using as a basis for the style of the film.

Why yes, that is a man looking up her skirt. The piece is a French work of art, translated into English it means “The Happy Accidents of the Swing”, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. My art major husband tells me that, yes, the men are doing this deliberately to get a peek, and yes, the woman is meant to be complicit in this act, and yes, the baby cherubs are watching you.