Movement to Make January National Folklore Month

I really dropped the ball on this one. Back in early December, Lise Lunge-Larsen emailed me about her forays into having January become National Folklore Month. Lise is a storyteller and author who also blogs at the Children's Literature Network at Snip, Snap, Snute. This past month she has been blogging specifically about folklore, including fairy tales and storytelling. Here is an edited version of her email:

Last spring I began blogging once a week about folktales for Children's Literature Network (http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/) an organization out of Minnesota that seeks to promote children's literature. I proposed last year that we should declare January National Folktale Month on order to promote more reading of folktales in the classroom and at home. After all poetry gets all of April to itself! During the month I will post a blog about various ways to incorporate folktales, fables and myths into the curriculum and everyday life. I am sure I will reference your blog and website a great deal and wondered if there was any way I could talk you into mentioning this on your site?

My blog is called "snipp, snapp, snute" after the traditional way to end a tale in Norway. I am after all, a native of that country.

As I said, I'm late to the party, but Lise's blog is excellent and I recommend giving it a looksy. I'm also predisposed to like people who work in folklore and children's literature, especially if they are Norwegian since I can claim a quarter of that myself through my grandfather who is 100%. Here are the posts she has shared this month:

And the Moral of the Story Is…



Telling the Tale



The Fairy Tale



Animal Adventures



Oodles of Noodles, or Noodlehead Stories



Cumulative Tales and more!



A Bag Full of Tricks



Pourquoi Tales, part deux!



Pourquoi Tales, part 1

Happy Folktale Month

And for good measure while we're here, here are some of Lise's books which I imagine look familiar to some of you:

  

  

Reminder: SurLaLune Book Club: January 2011: Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce

Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce

Just a reminder to everyone to join or at least read the SurLaLune Book Club: January 2011: Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. It has gotten a somewhat slow start, but so far we've discussed the heroines' personalities, the usage of LRRH and even the cover art. I need to jump back in myself sometime today...

And don't forget to be reading My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales for February's read! It's quite a different book from this one.

Fairytale Reflections (17) Jane Yolen at SMoST

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.

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+: