Picture Book: Peau d'âne by Hélène Druvert

UK/France Links

Peau d'âne by Hélène Druvert is one of my recent discoveries, published in France in 2015. The book is available at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr but not in Amazon.com.

I have a penchant for Peau d'âne picture books which pretty much only come in French since the story is beloved in France but avoided by publishers in other countries due to the possible controversies of the tale of which there are a few. (Not familiar with Peau d'âne? Read Donkeyskin at the SurLaLune primary site.) Which always makes the books even more appealing to me because they are rare to find. This is now one of my favorite renditions. This version also uses minimal text to tell the story, letting the reader take it at face value.

Druvert has a beautiful illustration style--using silhouettes to tell her stories. Every other page in her pictures books--for she has illustrated a few titles--are cut out pages, intricately die cut and designed to overlay the pages between them as you turn the pages. The pages are sturdy on heavy stock paper but still fragile since they are die cut. The results are beautiful.

So in the images below--which you can click to see larger--the left side of the image is the back side of the die cut page.

Other books by Druvert include, with the first two linking to Amazon.com and the second linking to Amazon.co.uk. The Mary Poppins and Paris titles also have the die cut pages. I do not know for sure about the other two.

Bargain Ebook: Deerskin by Robin McKinley for $1.99 TODAY ONLY

Deerskin by Robin McKinley is on sale in ebook format for $1.99 for TODAY ONLY. It was last on sale in March 2015 and usually retails for about $6.

Using what I've said about the book in the past:

Do I recommend this book? I remember first buying it upon its original release into hardcover with hard earned cash when being a poor student meant hardcover books were an absolute luxury. Have I ever regretted the purchase? No. Does the book still rest on the McKinley shelf in my library? Yes. Is the reason Donkeyskin is annotated on SurLaLune primarily in thanks to this book? Absolutely yes.

It's a tough book subject matter wise but it is lovely and now I also own it in ebook format, too, to access wherever I may be in the world. I think it handles a very difficult topic without glamorizing or exploiting it or being too graphic or explicit. Much more is implied than shown. But please read the description, be aware of the subject matter, and be aware of any personal trigger warnings, especially for victims of abuse. It is not a children's book either. These days it would be new adult but mature young adults will be fine with it. There is so much more out there that is much more graphic than this in the 22 years since it was published.

Book description:

The story of Princess Lissar, who flees her father’s wrath and is granted an unexpected new life

Princess Lissla Lissar is the only child of the king and his queen, who was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms. Everyone loved the splendid king and his matchless queen so much that no one had any attention to spare for the princess, who grew up in seclusion, listening to the tales her nursemaid told about her magnificent parents.

But the queen takes ill of a mysterious wasting disease and on her deathbed extracts a strange promise from her husband: “I want you to promise me . . . you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was.”

The king is crazy with grief at her loss, and slow to regain both his wits and his strength. But on Lissar’s seventeenth birthday, two years after the queen’s death, there is a grand ball, and everyone present looks at the princess in astonishment and whispers to their neighbors, How like her mother she is!

On the day after the ball, the king announces that he is to marry again—and that his bride is the princess Lissla Lissar, his own daughter.

Lissar, physically broken, half mad, and terrified, flees her father’s lust with her one loyal friend, her sighthound, Ash. It is the beginning of winter as they journey into the mountains—and on the night when it begins to snow, they find a tiny, deserted cabin with the makings of a fire ready-laid in the hearth.

Thus begins Lissar’s long, profound, and demanding journey away from treachery and pain and horror, to trust and love and healing.

Bargain Ebook: Deerskin by Robin McKinley for $1.99

Deerskin by Robin McKinley is on sale in ebook format for I don't know how long for $1.99.

Do I recommend this book? I remember first buying it upon its original release into hardcover with hard earned cash when being a poor student meant hardcover books were an absolute luxury. Have I ever regretted the purchase? No. Does the book still rest on the McKinley shelf in my library? Yes. Is the reason Donkeyskin is annotated on SurLaLune primarily in thanks to this book? Absolutely yes.

It's a tough book subject matter wise but it is lovely and now I also own it in ebook format, too, to access wherever I may be in the world. I think it handles a very difficult topic without glamorizing or exploiting it or being too graphic or explicit. Much more is implied than shown. But please read the description, be aware of the subject matter, and be aware of any personal trigger warnings, especially for victims of abuse. It is not a children's book either. These days it would be new adult but mature young adults will be fine with it. There is so much more out there that is much more graphic than this in the 22 years since it was published.

Book description:

The story of Princess Lissar, who flees her father’s wrath and is granted an unexpected new life

Princess Lissla Lissar is the only child of the king and his queen, who was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms. Everyone loved the splendid king and his matchless queen so much that no one had any attention to spare for the princess, who grew up in seclusion, listening to the tales her nursemaid told about her magnificent parents.

But the queen takes ill of a mysterious wasting disease and on her deathbed extracts a strange promise from her husband: “I want you to promise me . . . you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was.”

The king is crazy with grief at her loss, and slow to regain both his wits and his strength. But on Lissar’s seventeenth birthday, two years after the queen’s death, there is a grand ball, and everyone present looks at the princess in astonishment and whispers to their neighbors, How like her mother she is!

On the day after the ball, the king announces that he is to marry again—and that his bride is the princess Lissla Lissar, his own daughter.

Lissar, physically broken, half mad, and terrified, flees her father’s lust with her one loyal friend, her sighthound, Ash. It is the beginning of winter as they journey into the mountains—and on the night when it begins to snow, they find a tiny, deserted cabin with the makings of a fire ready-laid in the hearth.

Thus begins Lissar’s long, profound, and demanding journey away from treachery and pain and horror, to trust and love and healing.

Finally! Robin McKinley Backlist Available in Ebook Format

Hello, I'm Heidi and I'm a bookaholic. Which means I have a very long wishlist of books for my ebook devices. Much of that list has been honored by publishers releasing backlists but there are some major authors missing on my list. One of them is Robin McKinley. Yes, I own her oeuvre in paper but I want it in the much more portable ebook edition. These days I don't feel relaxed unless I have a 1,000+ books at my fingertips at any given moment.

So imagine my glee when I saw that much of McKinley's backlist will finally be available in ebook for my rereading convenience near or far and to share with the nieces who get to read books on my account. One niece is at the perfect McKinley reading age and I really wanted those books for her this past year but now is just fine, too.

So the following titles will be released to ebook format on 11/18/14 in the US. And there was much rejoicing! For some odd reason, The Blue Sword is missing from the releases list. I don't know why. Hari needs to be digitized, too. But I won't beg too much since I am getting these now. Well, I won't beg too much.

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

The Hero and the Crown (no fairy tales but an important book of my youth)

Sunshine (Beauty and the Beast)

Deerskin (Donkeyskin)

The Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin Hood)

A Knot in the Grain: and Other Stories

Rose Daughter (Beauty and the Beast)

The Door in the Hedge: and Other Stories (My first exposure to Twelve Dancing Princesses)

Description:

So begins “The Stolen Princess,” the first story of this collection, about the meeting between the human princess Linadel and the faerie prince Donathor. “The Princess and the Frog” concerns Rana and her unexpected alliance with a small, green, flipper-footed denizen of a pond in the palace gardens. “The Hunting of the Hind” tells of a princess who has bewitched her beloved brother, hoping to beg some magic of cure, for her brother is dying, and the last tale is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in which an old soldier discovers, with a little help from a lavender-eyed witch, the surprising truth about where the princesses dance their shoes to tatters every night.

Cinderella Tales: The Golden Bull, or, The Crafty Princess

First of all, yesterday's post was edited into oblivion by accident--that's what I get for not writing it in Word first. It was about the Grimms and more thoughts on Perrault. I am sure it was one of the best and most profound posts I have ever written. Not that I can ever prove that to you! Actually, I am sad because I did think a few deeper thoughts than usual, but I will try to recreate for a later post. For now, I'm skipping Grimms and sharing The Golden Bull today. It mostly predates the brothers anyway.

From my book, Cinderella Tales From Around the World:

Another tale, The Golden Bull, or, The Crafty Princess: In Four Parts, an ATU 510B tale, was popular during the 18th and early 19th centuries with numerous chapbook editions published in Great Britain and Scotland as well as in North America. A version of this last tale is not included in this collection, but can be found in internet databases. One edition, dated 1750, has the following extended description:

The Golden Bull; or, The Crafty Princess, in four parts.—1. How a king courted his own daughter for marriage, threatning her with death if she would not consent to be his wife. 2. The lady's craftiness to be convey'd over sea in a golden bull to the prince she loved. 3. How her arrival and love came to be made known to the young prince. 4. How her death was contrived by three ladies in her lover's absence: how she was preserved, and soon after married to the young prince: with other remarkable accidents that happened.

The multiple editions of this tale and their publication dates provide one of the illustrative points on how ATU 510B Donkeyskin and its variants virtually disappeared in English during the latter 19th century. The Victorian era suppressed the incest themes in these tales and then they began to lose momentum in collections, too. The tale is still well known in France, but the average English speaking person on the street would just look at you funny if you asked them about Donkeyskin or any of the other titles with the incest element. "That's not a fairy tale I've ever heard of," they'd say.

But the tale was relatively well-known prior to then, even in North America. The abundance of chapbook editions helps to convey that. It wouldn't be printed and bought so often if it wasn't wanted by the reading public. A simple search of WorldCat, for example, shows many listings with several estimated publication dates as well as various cities of publication around the U.K. and in the U.S. It's around until the early 1800s and then poof, gone! And when they do appear, the marriage demands from the fathers are edited.