Thursday, January 27, 2011

Fairytale Reflections (17) Jane Yolen at SMoST




Touch Magic

It's Thursday and I haven't shared last week's Fairytale Reflections (17) Jane Yolen at SMoST! And it's Jane Yolen. Of course, we all know who Jane is, so no introductions are really necessary although Kathrine Langrish offers a great one in the post, including discussing Touching Magic and Briar Rose.

Yolen doesn't pick a favorite fairy tale to discuss, but instead writes about fairy tales and writing in general.

Briar Rose

Here's an excerpt, and as always, click through to read it all:

A number of years ago, folklorist Alan Dundes coined the term “fakelore” to describe stories not from the folk canon but that sounded and tasted and felt like those stories but were invented whole cloth by writers. Lumping in, I suppose, Madame LePrince du Beaumont and Isak Dinesen with Hans Christian Andersen, Angela Carter, and (gulp) me.

Though of course the perceptive lover of such tales could have pointed out to him how often the best of those stories have already moved back into the folk corner, hiding there for a number of years until they have emerged as—ta!ta!—folk stories.

I don’t like Dundes’ dyad and actually make this distinction: the greatest stories I know whether folklore or fakelore touch on the sacred, that moment when head and heart and soul combine.
More books by Yolen, just a representation since I can't show all 300+:

Except the Queen Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls The Young Merlin Trilogy: Passager, Hobby, and Merlin Sleeping Ugly


Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Stories Favorite Folktales from Around the World (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) Come to the Fairies' Ball Not All Princesses Dress in Pink



Pay the Piper: A Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale (Yolen, Jane. Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale)  Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers and Eaters Troll Bridge: A Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale 

Tam Lin The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories Once upon a Bedtime Story: Classic Tales 

Mirror, Mirror: Forty Folk Tales for Mothers and Daughters to Share Firebird Mightier Than the Sword: World Folktales for Strong Boys

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