Dairy Farmers of Canada Rapunzel ad. Don't blink or you'll miss it!
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Showing posts with label mermaids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mermaids. Show all posts
Advertising: Dairy Farmers of Canada & Rapunzel
New Book: I Don't Want to Be a Pea! by Ann Bonwill and illustrated by Simon Rickerty
I Don't Want to Be a Pea!
by Ann Bonwill and illustrated by Simon Rickerty will be released on January 3, 2012 in the US. It has been available in the UK for a while now under the same title but with a different cover (second one above) and I was curious to see how the fairy tale inspiration worked. 
Book description from the publisher for UK edition:
Hugo is in no doubt as to what he and Bella should go as to the Hippo-Bird Fancy Dress Party. They will go as the princess and the pea and he will be the princess (of course!) leaving poor Bella to be the pea. Indignant, Bella refuses. She has a better suggestion - they will go as a mermaid on a rock and she will be the mermaid (of course!) leaving a huffy Hugo to be the rock. Hugo is not happy. But neither is Bella. They just can't decide on a costume and things reach a crisis when they both flounce off saying they don't want to go to the party at all. After time to consider, both Hugo and Bella calm down and (privately) both choose to dress as a pea as a gesture of making it all up to each other. So when they both arrive at the party as peas, Hugo and Bella announce proudly that they are 'two peas in a pod, just as it should be' underlining the message of the book that friendship is all about give and take. With wonderfully absurd illustrations from new talent Simon Rickerty and a great read-aloud text, this is a made-for-sharing picture book.
US edition:
Hugo Hippo has a best bird. Bella Bird has a best hippo. They make a perfect pair, and they are going to the Fairy Tale Dress-Up party together, of course: Hugo will be the princess, and Bella will be the pea.
No, wait: Bella will be the princess, and Hugo will be the pea….No, the first way. No, the second way. Wait, now, which way? If these two pals can't agree on who will be the pea, their party plan will fall to pieces. But when a couple of surprise compromises lead to a new costume solution, Hugo and Bella learn that sometimes it feels better to make someone else happy than to get your own way—and that when it comes to friendship, they're two peas in a pod.
Hugo and Bella mirror real-life give-and-take: Hippos and birds have symbiotic relationships in nature!
I received a review copy through Amazon and wrote a review for it this week. If you read it, you'll see I liked the book, but didn't love it. It has a spoiler, so be warned.
Hippo and Bird are going to the Bird-Hippo Fairy Tale Fancy Dress Party, but they can't decide on their costumes. Each wants to be a pair in which he/she is the starring role while the other is the supporting cast. For example: Bird is the mermaid and Hippo is the mermaid's rock. The dialogue is cute. The illustrations are cute. But somehow it is still lacking. I don't know if there is enough there for most children to understand the ending. And some of the spreads don't convey the message as well as one would hope--one spread doesn't even illustrate, just has paint splattered pages that don't hold interest at all.
*SPOILER*
They go as the Happy Ending. (They both end up being peas.)
I love the concept and the idea of the ending, but I am not so sure it is easily understood by the preschool set other than that both agree being friends is the most important part of the party. I don't think I am underestimating kids either since I know adults who won't quite "get it." I liked the book. I am keeping it. But I am not in love with it. In the end, it's really a 3 1/2 star book for me. It was released last year in the UK and I was eager to see it and happy to get a review copy, but perhaps I just expected too much from it.
And, as another reviewer noted, for reading aloud, using distinctive voices for the characters really helps. Most of the children in my life will enjoy it if I deliver it well and discuss it afterwards, but I don't think it will be their new favorite either.
Alice Munro on Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”
This was a few weeks ago, but I am still adding in things I missed while on vacation. From Maria Tatar's Blog, Breezes in Wonderland, just in case you missed this:
Here’s Alice Munro on H.C. Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” In The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, I referred to Claire Bloom’s memoir, Leaving a Doll’s House. There, Bloom confesses that she gave in to the Little Mermaid complex, embracing the view that love meant pain and suffering: “I believe that the stories my mother quite innocently passed on to me, The Snow Queen and The Little Mermaid, so innocently read to me years ago in a sunlit garden, stories of one young girl after another who had sacrificed herself at the altar of romantic love . . . had given me an extremely distorted image of sexual relationships between men and women.”
Alice Munro tells a different story. She read “The Little Mermaid” and was “appalled”: “She didn’t have to be changed to foam on the sea.” And so, Munro made up her own happy ending, because she had to “do something” about what she had found.
I loved hearing that. She is a kindred spirit.
New Release: Forsaken by Katherine Langrish
Today is the UK release day for Forsaken (EDGE - Rivets)
by Katherine Langrish. While the book is not readily available in paper quite yet in the US, the good news is that it is available in ebook format for a great price of $6.66 at Amazon.com. So you don't have to wait to read it. I adore ebook publishing...Langrish is best known around here as the keeper of the Seven Miles of Steel Thistles blog and the Fairy Tale Reflections series. Today she shared a little history of her new book on the blog, discussing its inspiration source from Agnete and the Mermaid.
Mara's mother is missing, her little brother is sick, maybe dying, her father is grieving. It all seems hopeless - until Mara sets out on a life-or-death journey to bring her mother home.
'Forsaken' is - along with most of my other books - based on folklore, on a tale which is most famously the inspiration for Matthew Arnold's beautiful 19th century poem 'The Forsaken Merman' - the story of a merman who marries a human woman, Margaret.
COME, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way!
The merman, who speaks the poem, has married a human woman, Margaret. They lived happily together under the sea till one day she heard church bells ringing in the world above, and felt a sudden longing to go and pray. The merman agreed to part with her for a short visit but once on land she never returned to the sea, leaving her husband and little mer-children desolate.
Come away, away, children.
Come children, come down.
The hoarse wind blows colder;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing, 'Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she:
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.'
I read this poem many times as a child and always loved its lilting, changing rhythms and the beauty of its descriptions, as well as feeling sorry for the poor, heartbroken merman. It's the opposite of the Selkie story which I use in 'West of the Moon': about the fisherman who takes a selkie bride, and the message of both tales seems to be about the attraction of the Other, as well as the difficulty of living with it. Of course the old belief about merfolk - as for all faerie folk - was that unlike human beings, they had no souls. Margaret fears she too will lose her immortal soul and her chance of heaven if she stays with the merman. This fear leads her to abandon her husband and children. And here is an eternal question, one still being asked and played out today in many a family: was she right to follow her beliefs? Or wrong to cause her family so much unhappiness?
In the original Danish ballad, which I think Arnold must have read, 'Agnete and the Merman', the woman lives eight years with the Merman under the sea until one day she 'hears the clocks of England chime' and asks permisson to go to church. She meets her mother at the church door. 'Where hast thou been?' 'I have been at the bottom of the sea, and have seven sons by the Merman'. The Merman comes to find her, but when he peeps into the church, all the little stone images turn their backs on him.
When I read this, a shiver ran down my spine and I knew I had to tell the story again - but this time I wondered, what would have happened if, instead of the merman, one of Margaret's own daughters came to find her...?
Agnete and the Mermaid is in my Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World
and I thought I had posted about it during mermaid month here on the blog, but apparently I didn't. It's a great one and I am thrilled Langrish used it for her book. Her book is aimed at young readers which makes this a short story for adult readers and great for difficult readers who may love mermaids.
Mermaids and Sirens in Art
Here is our Sunday morning video of Mermaids and Sirens in Art, courtesy of joshje777. This one is over 10 minutes long so sit back and enjoy. Check back next Sunday for the next in the series.
Shrinky Dinks!
Shrinky Dinks! I reveal my age when I say I adored Shrinky Dinks when I would color and bake them with my best friend Keri in fourth grade during our Friday night sleepovers. I stumbled across these when looking for something else a while back and have been flirting with them in my cart ever since. With a nephew and niece coming to visit in the coming months, I am tempted to get some and try them out again. No, there are no fairy tale ones, but there are mermaids and fairies which we discuss enough around here to merit their appearance. There are also aliens and pirates and monsters, oh my! I really wish there were dragons since that is what my niece is most fascinated with these days. Oh well. There's always the make your own kits and we do have a resident artist on hand with John. (He drew Leighton as an elfin archer last time she was here which totally made her night.)
The Seas by Samantha Hunt
A new discovery to me today thanks to a bargain book listing is The Seas
by Samantha Hunt. The ebook is temporarily marked down to $2.99 while the paperback is $12.03 discounted at Amazon
. The book was originally released in 2004 but somehow I have missed it until today. It draws inspiration from Undine and the Little Mermaid so it certainly deserves a mention on SurLaLune.Book description from the publisher:
Ever since her father walked into the ocean eleven years ago, a young woman waits for him to return. Life in her coastal town is decidedly bleak. Her mother spends her time quietly monitoring the ocean for her missing husband. Her grandfather passes the days typesetting dictionaries that will never be printed.
Rather than suffer the contortions of becoming a woman and accepting her father's apparent suicide, the narrator convinces herself she is a mermaid and escapes her dreary, northern town life via a fantastic myth.
When not chamber-maiding at decrepit motels or dreaming of becoming a scientist, she dedicates her time to falling obsessively in love with Jude, a drinker and a sailor twice her age who bears more than a passing similarity to her father. She knows Jude has a troubling secret that will, when revealed, help to fulfill the narrator's peculiar sense of her identity.
Part modern Gothic, part coming-of-age story, The Seas explores the very real possibilities in the unreal, straddling the horizons between the ocean and the land, literature and science, wishing and reality.
Here are some journal reviews, too:
From Publishers Weekly
In this retelling of "The Little Mermaid," Hunt traps readers in an undertow of tragedy gripping a bleak Northern fishing town. A young woman meets Jude, a sailor whose experiences in Iraq have rendered him watery and insubstantial. Jude becomes both love interest and paternal figure for the girl, whose own father disappeared at sea years before. Convinced she is a mermaid, she believes her love dooms the mortal Jude, but she longs to take him into the ocean with her. The sea's presence is constantly felt in the bleak, isolated town. "There is little else to do here besides get drunk and it seems to make what is small, us, part of something that is drowned and large, something like the bottom of the sea...." Atmospherically, the book resembles Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, but in this story, chances for redemption are rare, and the line between reality and fairy tale is blurred. The girl's grandfather, a typesetter, fills her head with words and definitions, but despite determining to observe everything as a scientific experiment, she cannot find a way to define the wet footprints she finds in odd places, the strange things she sees on the beach and her drowning love for Jude. While Hunt occasionally hammers her themes too hard—in one instance even listing them for us—this book devastates with its lonely, cold imagery.
and
From Booklist
Hunt's fevered, reality-bending first novel is clearly inspired by the 1811 German novel Undine, about a female water spirit who falls in love with a mortal knight. When he betrays her, she kills him with a kiss. In Hunt's version, Undine is the nameless 19-year-old narrator who is in love with a 33-year-old fisherman, Jude, a former soldier (knight) who has returned to their small town in the far north unable--or unwilling--to speak about his experiences in the military. To extend the Undine analogy, the girl's father--before vanishing into the ocean 11 years earlier--has told her that she is a mermaid, "from the sea," a sentiment that obsesses the girl. Is she? And if so, will she kill her knight with a kiss? Some readers, overburdened by obscure symbols and narrative ambiguity, won't care. Others, however, will enjoy this fusion of fiction and folklore that is illuminated by flashes of quite fine writing. Michael Cart
More Medical Disorders With Fairy Tale/Folklore Names
SurLaLune reader Meghan sent me an email yesterday in follow-up to my post about the Sleeping Beauty sleeping disorder.
Here is what she sent, slightly edited. Thanks Meghan for answering my call for a list like this!
I recently read your blog post about Sleeping Beauty syndrome, and I actually have a short list of medical conditions with fairy tale names.
1. Rapunzel syndrome--a rare condition where sufferers consume their own hair (Trichophagia). Because the human body cannot digest hair, it collects in the stomach/bowels/colon as a ball, known as a trichobezoar. The syndrome sometimes occurs alongside trichotillomania (the compulsion to pull out one's hair).
2. Cinderella complex--Ascribed to women who have a fear of independence, and a desire to be taken care of by others. This is not wildly accepted as a complex, but is used as an explanation as to why some women stay in dysfunctional relationships. To be honest, I'm not sure why it's called Cinderella syndrome.
3. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, also called Todd's syndrome "is a disorienting neurological condition that affects human perception. Sufferers may experience micropsia, macropsia, or size distortion of other sensory modalities." Read more on Wikipedia.
4. Ondine's Syndrome, or Ondine's Curse--People stop breathing when they sleep, it's a rare and very dangerous form of sleep apnea. Read more on Wikipedia.
I can add one more--Sirenomelia, commonly known as Mermaid syndrome, "a very rare congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together, giving them the appearance of a mermaid's tail." More on Wikipedia.
Anyone have any more?
Mermaids Annual from Faerie Magazine Publisher
The publisher of Faerie Magazine is starting an annual Mermaid magazine, the first issue of which is due out next month. From the website:
Mermaids - Over 200 pages of lush photography, renowned authors and artists, packed with information including the current revival of interest in Mermaids. Advice for aspiring mermaids! Fiction, non-fiction, aquariums and aquatic wonderland, find out what's happening under the sea! Designed to be collected and treasured for years, Mermaids will stun you with 'lore' and the 'lure'!
Pre-orders for Mermaids, orders placed before September 15, 2011, will cost $11.95 (a savings of 20%), plus shipping. Beginning September 15, 2011, Mermaids will cost $14.95 plus shipping.
Mermaid and Pirate Commercials from Clorox
Have you seen these yet? I hadn't. I tend to skip most commercials thanks to my DVR only stopping if one catches my interest. These would. Clever advertisers. One is pertinent here since it is mermaids. Going to school no less, so even appropriate for this month with so many children headed back to school. The pirate one is pretty, too, so I am including it for its own sake.
Discovered via Tales of Whimsy who likened the mermaid on to Emily Windsnap: Three Swishy Mermaid Tales: Books 1-3
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The Undrowned Child by Michelle Lovric
The Undrowned Child
by Michelle Lovric was released yesterday. I received a review copy through the Amazon Vine program.Book description from the publisher:
Teodora has always longed to visit Venice, and at last she has her chance. But strange and sinister things are afoot in the beautiful floating city. Teo is quickly subsumed into a secret world in which salty-tongued mermaids run subversive printing presses, ghosts good and bad patrol the streets, statues speak, rats read, and librarians fluidly turn into cats. And where a book, The Key to the Secret City, leads Teo straight into the heart of the danger that threatens to destroy the city to which she feels she belongs. An ancient proverb seems to unite Teo with a Venetian boy, Renzo, and with the Traitor who has returned from the dark past to wreak revenge. . . . But who is the Undrowned Child destined to save Venice?My brief review of the book because I hate writing plot descriptions:
As I read this book, I realized just how little I really knew about Venice. I am a voracious reader but somehow my experiences have inadvertently kept me away from books set in this fascinating city. I admit I was first drawn to the book by the cover, then by the setting and finally by the mention of fantastical creatures, especially mermaids which are of high interest of late. The book didn't disappoint. The story is summarized elsewhere so I won't do that here. I started reading it without caring because the above mentioned features were enough of a draw for me. I enjoyed the main characters, Teo and Renzo, even more than I expected. I loved the setting. I enjoyed the history. I was entertained and I learned much during my reading.
One of the loveliest aspects of the book was an appendix with sections of "Places and Things in The Undrowned Child that you can still see in Venice" and "What is true, and what's made up?" It kept me from having to interrupt my reading to go look up so much for I always want to know more when I read books like this. Recommended for fantasy fans, especially if they like their fantasy mixed with historical fiction. Yes, it's aimed at younger readers, but adults with interests in the genre just may enjoy it more...
