http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com A Book Blog Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:10:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-the-butterfly/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-the-butterfly/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:17:01 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=1620 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-the-butterfly/feed/ 2 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-new-modern-versions/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-new-modern-versions/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:00:12 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=1586 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!]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-new-modern-versions/feed/ 4 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-little-red-riding-hood/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-little-red-riding-hood/#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:00:57 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=1444 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-little-red-riding-hood/feed/ 2 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/musing-mondays-upcoming-read-a-thon/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/musing-mondays-upcoming-read-a-thon/#comments Wed, 07 Apr 2010 02:26:03 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=1406 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/musing-mondays-upcoming-read-a-thon/feed/ 3 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-rapunzel/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-rapunzel/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:31:49 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=1292 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.]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-rapunzel/feed/ 2 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-cinderella/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-cinderella/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:07:58 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=1239 Share a Story, Shape a Future and in that vein we are supposed to blog about our favorite fairy tale from childhood. I'm going to take that theme and flip it a bit. I spent a semester studying fairy tales in college and I'm going to quote liberally from one of the essays I wrote in that semester. One of the class assignments was to look at all of the different fairy tale versions of Cinderella and determine which one you would share with your child. I know everyone did Cinderella last week, but I missed it so you get me this week instead!]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/fairy-tale-friday-cinderella/feed/ 3 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-r/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-r/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:50:53 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=777 Publisher's Weekly: Bestseller Turtledove (American Empire, etc.) buckles a handsome Elizabethan swash with his latest fascinating what if: suppose the Spanish Armada had beaten the Virgin Queen's little navy and reimposed on England the fanatic Roman Catholicism of Bloody Mary Tudor and her ruthless husband, Philip II of Spain. For almost a decade, the English have chafed under Philip's daughter Isabella and her Austrian consort, as well as the Inquisition, enforced by arrogant dons, their hired-gun Irish gallowglasses (rumored to be cannibals) and English Catholic sympathizers. Good Queen Bess languishes in the Tower of London while her supporters plot rebellion-to be sparked by no less than a patriotic new play by Will Shakespeare, Turtledove's lovingly drawn hero, who's drawn willy-nilly into the conspiracy by Elizabeth's former minister, Lord Burghley. The author revels in complex turns of language and spouts brilliant adaptations of the real Shakespeare's immortal lines. Superbly realized historical figures include the "darkly handsome," doomed Kit Marlowe and the Machiavellian Robert Cecil. Equally engaging are such lesser characters as the "cunning woman" Cicely Sellis, who "thinks of England." Turtledove has woven an intricate and thoroughly engrossing portrait of an era, a theatrical tradition, a heroic band of English brothers and their sneering overlords. O, brave alternative world that has such people in't!]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-r/feed/ 0 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-q/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-q/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:47:46 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=671 A young woman caught in the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half sister, Elizabeth, must find her true destiny amid treason, poisonous rivalries, loss of faith, and unrequited love. It is winter, 1553. Pursued by the Inquisition, Hannah Green, a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, is forced to flee Spain with her father. But Hannah is no ordinary refugee. Her gift of "Sight," the ability to foresee the future, is priceless in the troubled times of the Tudor court. Hannah is adopted by the glamorous Robert Dudley, the charismatic son of King Edward's protector, who brings her to court as a "holy fool" for Queen Mary and, ultimately, Queen Elizabeth. Hired as a fool but working as a spy; promised in wedlock but in love with her master; endangered by the laws against heresy, treason, and witchcraft, Hannah must choose between the safe life of a commoner and the dangerous intrigues of the royal family that are inextricably bound up in her own yearnings and desires. Teeming with vibrant period detail and peopled by characters seamlessly woven into the sweeping tapestry of history, The Queen's Fool is another rich and emotionally resonant gem from this wonderful storyteller.]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-q/feed/ 2 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-p/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-p/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:49:24 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=630 The Penelopiad: "Homer’s Odyssey is not the only version of the story. Mythic material was originally oral, and also local — a myth would be told one way in one place and quite differently in another. I have drawn on material other than the Odyssey, especially for the details of Penelope’s parentage, her early life and marriage, and the scandalous rumors circulating about her. I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in the Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself."]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/a-z-wednesday-the-letter-p/feed/ 4 http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/school-books/ http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/school-books/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:04:25 +0000 Bitsy http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/?p=611 The Bobbsey Twins, The Boxcar Children, and Nancy Drew. By the time I was in fourth grade I was bored out of my skull by what the class was reading and a special more advanced reading class was made. The class promptly flopped because parents wanted their children to be in the advanced class too and so we were stuck with slow, stuttering readers all over again before we had even reached Christmas. By the time I was in the fifth grade I was reading at college level, by the time I was in the sixth I was such a voracious reader that, when stacked up against the entire rest of the sixth grade, I still had them beat by three (Newbery Award winning) books that school year, and that included a three month forced vacation from January to March. To say the least, I was bored throughout most of elementary school, and I really wish I could have been challenged more.]]> http://fabula.exlibrisbitsy.com/chatter/school-books/feed/ 1