Fairy Tale Fridays - In Which I'm Set Straight On What Makes A Fairy Tale A Fairy Tale

Last week in Fairy Tale Fridays, I mentioned that the writers at the Omaha Lit Fest didn't have a specific definition of "fairy tale."  On Sunday I told you that I had heard from Kate Bernheimer, who edited "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me."  Ms. Bernheimer said that she does have a definition "which is a bit circular; they are works of art that have a fairy tale feel."  Then she directed me to some wonderful essays she's written which can be found on her website.  In her essay titled "A Terrible Twist," originally published in Fences, Bernheimer writes:

"In fairy tales the author (authors) does not strive to represent a more real world that exists beyond its pages, but strives to create new worlds. To create sense. To create logic, as well as illogic.  To create time and space, not to reflect it.  To create possibility.  To create life in its becoming."

In an essay titled "Fairy Tale is Form, " Bernheimer introduces the reader to four formal components of fairy tales: flatness, abstraction, intuitive logic and normalized magic.  You may find some of these components in more recent writings but, says Bernheimer, "the first thing you always know about a fairy tale is that you are in it.  Immediately it announces that it is a form and that you are inside the form."

This week I read two fairy tales from a book we gave our children for Christmas in 1995, "A Child's Book of Stories," illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith.  The first was "Snow White and Rose Red."  This is not the story told in the Disney movie "Snow White."  In this book at least, that story is titled "Snow Drop."  "Snow White and Rose Red" is instead the story of two young girls who live with their frail mother.  These two girls could not be better people and no one every thinks to harm them.  Not even a bear that shows up at their home one cold night.  Their mother allows the bear to sleep on the hearth and soon the girls are treating him as if he were a domesticated pet.  When spring arrives, the bear leaves but tells them he will be back again.  One day shortly after the girls are in the woods when they discover a dwarf who has caught his beard in a log.  The only way the girls can find to save him is to chop off a small bit of his beard.  The dwarf is furious...as he is again twice more when the girls have to save him.  The fourth time they come across the dwarf, he is laying out some gem stones when suddenly the bear appears and kills the dwarf.  It seems that the bear is really a prince who had a spell cast on him that could only be broken by killing the dwarf and he is really a prince.  Who conveniently has a brother.  So, of course, the girls both marry one of the princes.

The second story I read was titled "Goldilocks; or The Three Bears" which was the traditional story of Goldilocks with which we are all familiar.  What was most interesting to me was that there was a second story in the book called "The Story of Pretty Goldilocks."  Until I read this book with my children, I'd never heard of this story.  It's the story of a beautiful princess who is the object of a certain king's desire.  When she turns down his first emissary, he sends another named "Charming."  The princess sets many task for Charming but I think you can already guess where this tale is going when it features a princess and a man named Charming!

Next week, Timothy Shaffert's story "The Mermaid In The Tree," which takes as it's inspiration Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid."  Oh, and you all know how much I love Unbridled Books; imagine how excited I was to find Shaffert's books in their catalog.  I'll soon be reading his book "The Coffins of Little Hope."  Also next week, more on fairy tales from Kate Bernheimer.

2011 Reading Challenges

I think...I hope...that I've settled on the reading challenges I'm going to attempt for 2011.  As I said in my Sunday Salon, I'm going to be continuing with the Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge.  I will also continue with the Our Mutual Read challenge (although I'm not sure I'm going to master it this year) and will attempt the Michener Challenge again next year.  I'll also do the Everything Austen Challenge in 2011.

This year I'm adding a new-to-me challenge in 2011--War Through The Generations Reading Challenge.  I've always thought this sounded like a great challenge but never was sure I wanted to commit to it.  In 2011, though, the U.S. Civil War is the focus and I can't resist joining.  I think, I know, I've mentioned before that my dad was an American History teacher for almost 40 years with a particular passion for the Civil War.  And by passion, I mean that our three-week-long summer vacations nearly always revolved around finding our way to as many Civil War battlefields as possible.  At the time I wasn't very appreciative. Okay, I wasn't appreciative at all.  I mean, it was not within my capabilities to stand in a green park-like area and imagine the solders coming over a hill top only to be met with bayonets and gunfire.  That passion my dad, and my mom to a lesser extent, have has gradually worn on me and I'm eager to have the excuse to read more about this period in our history.  Plus, I have this amazing library of Civil War books to draw from!

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
First published in 1865
Source: bought for my daughter who loves the Disney movie

When Alice follows a white rabbit with a pocket watch into a hole, she finds herself in Wonderland, a land where she frequently finds herself growing and shrinking and meets one of the strangest assortment of characters ever to grace the pages of literature, including the Cheshire Cat, a hookah-smoking caterpillar, The Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts.

Not long after she arrives in Wonderland, Alice begins to think that she may no longer be who she thinks she is, what with the changing sizes, her memory lapses, and all of the strange things she's seeing.  But she never really does lose herself, always retaining her common sense and feeling of fairness.

Of course the book is full of nonsense, which is much of what makes it so appealing to children.  But it's full of the kinds of humor that equally amusing for adults.  In one chapter, Alice and a group of animals have had to swim and are looking for something to dry themselves.  A mouse ("a person of some authority") began to tell the group the "dryest" thing he knows, which turns out to be a story of early English political history.  The Duchess is constantly trying to make a moral of everything.  Great long passages are plays on how the English language can be misunderstood and misused.

""Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily replied: "at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see!"
"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like!""

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland was originally a story told by Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll) told to ten-year-old Alice Lidell and her sisters on a boat ride in 1862.  Alice asked Dodgson to write the story down which he finally did three years later, complete with his own drawings.  When the book was published, however, it included the drawing of John Tenniel.

I generally include what I didn't like or didn't think worked in a book when I do a review but I must admit that I can't think of a single thing I didn't enjoy in this story.  I was enchanted by Carroll's clever writing and amusing characters and absolutely adored Tenniel's drawings.  If you have not read this book, it can be had for free in several places on the internet.  But if you have children, I highly recommend picking up a copy to read to them; it will be a book they will want to read again and again.  No wonder my daughter loves this story so much!  I can't wait to read Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There, Carroll's follow up to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Officially Admitting Defeat

For no earthly reason, I have failed at this challenge.  Even with almost four weeks left in the year, there is no way that I will be able to read ten books from my shelves that I will be able to pass along.  This should have been so easy.  I have hundreds of books that I need to read and will likely pass along when I'm done.  But my year has almost entirely consisted of reading books that were review books, reading books I loved so much that I didn't want to part with them and re-reading books I already owned.  So...what I thought was the easiest challenge I signed up for, turns out to be one of the hardest.  I'm waving the white flag.

The Raven And Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
My copy published 1992
Source: bought it for my son

Everyone knows the poem "The Raven" and probably several of Poe's many stories.  I had never read any of Poe's other poems prior to reading this book.  Not surprisingly, there's not a happy one in the bunch. Poe's life was difficult and filled with the lose of loved ones, many of the deaths being memorialized in his poetry. 

There were only a couple of poems that I liked in this collection; I far prefer Poe's stories to his poetry.  The relentless sadness, the strange cadence of some of the poems, and the similarity between so many of the poems all served to make this slim volume one I had to fight to get through.  This one pretty much sums up so many of them and so much more succintly:

"Deep In Earth"
Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone.

I read this collection as part of the Gilmore Girls Challenge.  I can't tell you how much I wish Rory would have read "The Tell-Tale Heart" instead of "The Raven!"