SurLaLune March Madness: In Like a Lion out Like a Lamb

So March is full of almost overwhelming possibilities. I have the choices of Youth Art Month, Women's History Month, fairy tale film releases, and two more SurLaLune Press releases by the end of the month or early April at the latest. Plan for announcements of "Bluebeard Tales From Around the World" and "Grateful Dead Tales From Around the World" in the coming weeks. Both would have been better October releases, but sometimes life doesn't cooperate.

Youth Art Month, according to Wikipedia, is "a month of promoting art and art education in the United States. It is observed in March, with thousands of American schools participating, often with the involvement of local art museums and civic organizations." I am going to celebrate it rather slant overall by highlighting a different fairy tale picture book each day of the month, several of which are new and recent releases, some of which are foreign titles. After all, children's book illustrations are one of the earliest forms of artwork most children see. It is so ubiquitous to many that we forget that it is art we are looking at on those pages.

Women's History Month is a little more self-explanatory. However, I really explored it in depth last year with my daily posts on Women and Folklore. so I won't devote a daily post to it this month. I will be creating some new posts, however, for the topic is very dear to me. If you want more, please click on the Women and Folklore label to the left of the page to see all of March 2010's posts as well as some that followed since.

This is the first month in my memory where we will have two major film releases with direct fairy tale inspiration released in two consecutive weeks. We have Beastly this Friday, March 4 and Red Riding Hood on March 11. Yes, this means it is actually possible to watch a double feature of two fairy tale films in most movie theatres across the country starting March 11 for at least a few weeks. Then Tangled is released to DVD on March 29th giving more viewers a chance to see it or see it again.