Coming to DVD: Classic Storybook Collection with Hayley Mills

Classic Storybook Collection with Hayley Mills will be released on 1/17/17. The 2-DVD set includes all 32 segments from the show's run:

Synopsis:

Travel to a world of make-believe with your host HAYLEY MILLS as these fanciful, educational stories come to life. Come away on a journey you’ll treasure forever with this enchanting, animated anthology.

Target Audience:

Kids 3-7, Parents 30+

Notable Cast/Crew:

Voice talents of James Earl Jones, Mickey Rooney, John Carradine, Tammy Grimes, Ruth Buzzi, June Foray (Granny in Looney Tunes cartoons and Cindy Lou Who in How The Grinch Stole Christmas), Hans Conried (Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Dr. T in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.), Lucille Bliss (Smurfette in Smurfs), Jack Angel (King Zarkon in Voltron) and more!

Key selling points:

- Produced for TV and school libraries as The Storybook Series with Hayley Mills
- Reminiscent of “Reading Rainbow” which has enjoyed a recent resurgence
- The entire collection of stories were produced by Bosustow Entertainment – a prestigious animation studio from the 1960s-1990s with multiple Emmy® and Oscar® winning features along with animated segments for Sesame Street and CBS After School TV Specials
- DVD + DIGITAL ACCESS – provides consumers with 2 ways to watch!

DISC 1:

The Fisherman and His Wife
Tom Thumb
Seven with One Blow
The Youth Who Wanted to Shiver
Three Golden Hairs
Hans in Luck
Hug Me
Silver Pony
Creole
Hardlucky
The Furious Flycycle
Someone New
Ghost in the Shed
The Reluctant Dragon

DISC 2:

The Practical Princess
Beauty and the Beast
Myra
I'm Not Oscar's Friend Anymore
Martha Ann and the Mother Store
The Man Who Had No Dream
The Legend of Paul Bunyan
The Wave: A Japanese Folktale
Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Just Say Hic!
The Beginning
Who Do You Think Should Belong to the Club?
Good Goodies
Noises in the Night
All in the Morning Early
Birds of a Feather
Modern Life
My Mother is the Most Beautiful Mother in the World

Bargain Ebook: The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton for $1.99 including Transformations

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton is on sale for $1.99 in ebook format. The book merits mention here since the complete poems includes Sexton's landmark Transformations collection of fairy tale poems. Transformations is currently selling for $7.99, $14.95 in paper, so with this book you get it and all of her other poetry for $1.99. That's exceptional and a price break I have never seen before unless you buy a used copy. Sexton's work is often studied and mentioned in literary fairy tale studies so it's an important part of a fairy tale library, too. Of course, the poems are not for the faint of heart either, so be aware of that.

Book description:

The collected works of Anne Sexton showcase the astonishing career of one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets

For Anne Sexton, writing served as both a means of expressing the inner turmoil she experienced for most of her life and as a therapeutic force through which she exorcised her demons. Some of the richest poetic descriptions of depression, anxiety, and desperate hope can be found within Sexton’s work. The Complete Poems, which includes the eight collections published during her life, two posthumously published books, and other poems collected after her death, brings together her remarkable body of work with all of its range of emotion.

With her first collection, the haunting To Bedlam and Part Way Back, Sexton stunned critics with her frank treatment of subjects like masturbation, incest, and abortion, blazing a trail for representations of the body, particularly the female body, in poetry. She documented four years of mental illness in her moving Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Live or Die, and reimagined classic fairy tales as macabre and sardonic poems in Transformations. The Awful Rowing Toward God, the last book finished in her lifetime, is an earnest and affecting meditation on the existence of God. As a whole, The Complete Poems reveals a brilliant yet tormented poet who bared her deepest urges, fears, and desires in order to create extraordinarily striking and enduring art.

Bargain Ebook: The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire) by C. J. Redwine for $2.99

The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire) by C. J. Redwine is on sale in ebook format today for $2.99! This was the only book in the 442 ebooks on sale for Cyber Monday on Amazon that was fairy tale related. That's rather rare, but if I had a book to choose for the list, this would be on my short list.

Redwine lives in my area and I got to hear her speak last month at the Southern Festival of Books. It wasn't my first time, but each time is more fun than the last. She's so funny! This is part of a planned long series with lots of world building and several fairy tales in the mix. This is the first time the book has been bargain priced to my knowledge, so get it now if you haven't already!

Reminder! Today is the last day to Get $10 off $25 print book purchase on Amazon!

Book description:

A New York Times bestselling dark epic fantasy inspired by the tale of Snow White, from C. J. Redwine, the author of the Defiance series. This breathtakingly romantic, action-packed fantasy is perfect for fans of A Court of Thorns and Roses and Cinder.

Lorelai Diederich, crown princess and fugitive at large, has one mission: kill the wicked queen who took both the Ravenspire throne and the life of her father. To do that, Lorelai needs to use the one weapon she and Queen Irina have in common—magic. She’ll have to be stronger, faster, and more powerful than Irina, the most dangerous sorceress Ravenspire has ever seen.

In the neighboring kingdom of Eldr, when Prince Kol’s father and older brother are killed by an invading army of magic-wielding ogres, the second-born prince is suddenly given the responsibility of saving his kingdom. To do that, Kol needs magic of his own—and the only way to get it is to make a deal with the queen of Ravenspire, promise to become her personal huntsman—and bring her Lorelai’s heart.

But Lorelai is nothing like Kol expected—beautiful, fierce, and unstoppable—and despite dark magic, Lorelai is drawn in by the passionate and troubled king. Fighting to stay one step ahead of the dragon huntsman—who she likes far more than she should—Lorelai does everything in her power to ruin the wicked queen. But Irina isn’t going down without a fight, and her final move may cost the princess the one thing she still has left to lose.

Get $10 off $25 print book purchase on Amazon!

Get $10 off $25 print book purchase on Amazon! I look for this every Thanksgiving and use it to get a book off my wish list.

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Bargain Ebook: West of the Moon by Margi Preus

West of the Moon by Margi Preus is on sale for $3.72 in ebook format, down from its usual $7 price. This has been on my wishlist so I grabbed it at this price.

Book description:

In West of the Moon, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Margi Preus expertly weaves original fiction with myth and folktale to tell the story of Astri, a young Norwegian girl desperate to join her father in America. After being separated from her sister and sold to a cruel goat farmer, Astri makes a daring escape. She quickly retrieves her little sister, and, armed with a troll treasure, a book of spells and curses, and a possibly magic hairbrush, they set off for America. With a mysterious companion in tow and the malevolent "boatman" in pursuit, the girls head over the Norwegian mountains, through field and forest, and in and out of folktales and dreams as they steadily make their way east of the sun and west of the moon.

The Cecelia and Kate Novels by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer for $1.99 (For all 3!)

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm taking a "sit break" real quick from my Thanksgiving hosting demands and sharing this treasure because it makes me smile just to think about it.

The Cecelia and Kate Novels: Sorcery & Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician by Patricia C. Wrede (Author) and Caroline Stevermer (Author) is on sale for $1.99--it's usually $9.99 so that is a bargain. That's 3 books for two bucks and they are excellent books, too.

I've recommended these repeatedly over the years with about a 98% success rate of people loving them. Sorcery & Cecelia was a cult classic for years that was out of print with paperback editions selling for sometimes $100. Yes, that was years ago and I am old. But Wrede and Stevermer then wrote the two sequels and the first book got reprinted as a result. Now they never have to go out of print again with the digital age. Love that!

So if you haven't read these, they will make a nice escape once your six hours of Gilmore Girls watching has been completed this weekend. Because according to the media that is what everyone will be doing instead of shopping. And I will be one of them! I'm ready for a trip to Stars Hollow myself.

Book descriptions:

A trio of bewitching novels featuring devoted cousins who must juggle their magical powers with their duties as ladies in Regency-era England.

Enter Regency-era England—and a world in which magical mayhem and high society go hand in hand—with three novels featuring cousins Cecelia and Kate.

In Sorcery & Cecelia, the two cousins have been inseparable since girlhood. But in 1817, Kate goes to London to make her debut into English society, leaving Cecelia behind to fight boredom in her small country town. While visiting the Royal College of Wizards, Kate stumbles on a plot to destroy a beloved sorcerer—and only Cecelia can help her save him.

In The Grand Tour, Cecelia and Kate, along with their husbands, are inaugurating married life with a trip to the Continent. When a mysterious woman in Calais gives Cecelia a package intended for Kate’s mother-in-law, however, the two young wives realize they must spend their honeymoons preventing an emperor-in-exile named Napoleon from reclaiming the French crown.

In The Mislaid Magician, it is 1828 and the cousins are now society matrons. The steam engine is announcing its arrival and the shaking of the locomotives begins to disrupt England’s ancient, underground magical ley lines. When the disappearance of a foreign diplomat threatens to become an international incident, Cecelia departs to fight for the future of magic—leaving Kate to care for a gaggle of disobedient, spell-casting tots.

Blending history, romance, and magic, these charming novels from the author of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles will delight anyone who loves Harry Potter or Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell.

New Book: Beast by Brie Spangler

Beast by Brie Spangler was released last month. It's a Beauty and the Beast retelling so that's catnip for the majority of the readers here. It's on my own TBR list for that reason.

Book description:

A witty, wise, and heart-wrenching reimagining of Beauty and the Beast that will appeal to fans of Rainbow Rowell and David Levithan.

Tall, meaty, muscle-bound, and hairier than most throw rugs, Dylan doesn’t look like your average fifteen-year-old, so, naturally, high school has not been kind to him. To make matters worse, on the day his school bans hats (his preferred camouflage), Dylan goes up on his roof only to fall and wake up in the hospital with a broken leg—and a mandate to attend group therapy for self-harmers.

Dylan vows to say nothing and zones out at therapy—until he meets Jamie. She’s funny, smart, and so stunning, even his womanizing best friend, JP, would be jealous. She’s also the first person to ever call Dylan out on his self-pitying and superficiality. As Jamie’s humanity and wisdom begin to rub off on Dylan, they become more than just friends. But there is something Dylan doesn’t know about Jamie, something she shared with the group the day he wasn’t listening. Something that shouldn’t change a thing. She is who she’s always been—an amazing photographer and devoted friend, who also happens to be transgender. But will Dylan see it that way?


"Writing smartly in Dylan's voice, Spangler artfully represents both main characters: the boy who feels like a freak and the witty, imperfect, wise trans girl he loves. Very lightly borrowing on the classic fairy tale, she allows them to fail and succeed without resorting to paper villains or violent plot points to manipulate compassion. A believable and beautiful human story."--Kirkus, starred review

"Spangler’s captivating portrayals of Dylan and Jamie offer piercing insight into the long, painful battle to shatter stereotypes in order to win dignity, love, and acceptance."--Publishers Weekly, Starred review

New Book: Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (The Middle Ages Series) by Richard Firth Green

Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (The Middle Ages Series) by Richard Firth Green was released a few months ago. I learned about it shortly after and have been stalking it ever since. Which is funny because it's not my top tier catnip but this topic and time period fascinate me.

Book description:

In Elf Queens and Holy Friars Richard Firth Green investigates an important aspect of medieval culture that has been largely ignored by modern literary scholarship: the omnipresent belief in fairyland.

Taking as his starting point the assumption that the major cultural gulf in the Middle Ages was less between the wealthy and the poor than between the learned and the lay, Green explores the church's systematic demonization of fairies and infernalization of fairyland. He argues that when medieval preachers inveighed against the demons that they portrayed as threatening their flocks, they were in reality often waging war against fairy beliefs. The recognition that medieval demonology, and indeed pastoral theology, were packed with coded references to popular lore opens up a whole new avenue for the investigation of medieval vernacular culture.

Elf Queens and Holy Friars offers a detailed account of the church's attempts to suppress or redirect belief in such things as fairy lovers, changelings, and alternative versions of the afterlife. That the church took these fairy beliefs so seriously suggests that they were ideologically loaded, and this fact makes a huge difference in the way we read medieval romance, the literary genre that treats them most explicitly. The war on fairy beliefs increased in intensity toward the end of the Middle Ages, becoming finally a significant factor in the witch-hunting of the Renaissance.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. Believing in Fairies
Chapter 2. Policing Vernacular Belief
Chapter 3. Incubi Fairies
Chapter 4. Christ the Changeling
Chapter 5. Living in Fairyland
Postscript

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

You can read an excerpt on the publisher's site.

Bargain Ebook: Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire

Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire is on sale in ebook format for $1.99. This book features Baba Yaga and Russian folklore. Maguire has written several fairy tale retellings for both young and old although he is of course most famous for his Wicked. This is the first time this has been on sale to my knowledge.

Book description:

In this tour de force, master storyteller Gregory Maguire offers a dazzling novel for fantasy lovers of all ages. Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg—a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age. When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and—in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured—Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.