Pottery Barn Kids: Princess and the Pea Dolls

From Pottery Barn Kids: Princess and the Pea Dolls:

The comical tale of The Princess and the Pea has amused children for generations and was the inspiration behind our exclusive dolls. Both feature extra-long, skinny limbs, an embroidered face and a sweet outfit.

14" wide x 4" deep x 30" high

Made of soft linen and cotton jersey with embroidered faces and braided yarn hair.

Dresses are sewn from a medley of fabrics including velvet, felt, percale and ribbon. Ages 2 and up.

I wonder at a copywriter who uses "comical tale" instead of "fairy tale" but perhaps the only thought was of Once Upon a Mattress?

Thanks for sharing, Val!

Bargain Ebook: Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine is temporarily discounted to $1.99 for Kindle ebook format. No, it's not the masterpiece that is Ella Enchanted, but it's a fun book and worth every penny of $1.99 although I already own it in paper.

Book description:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to be pretty . . .

Aza's singing is the fairest in all the land, and the most unusual. She can "throw" her voice so it seems to come from anywhere. But singing is only one of the two qualities prized in the Kingdom of Ayortha. Aza doesn't possess the other: beauty. Not even close. She's hidden in the shadows in her parents' inn, but when she becomes lady-in-waiting to the new queen, she has to step into the light—especially when the queen demands a dangerous favor. A magic mirror, a charming prince, a jealous queen, palace intrigue, and an injured king twine into a maze that Aza must penetrate to save herself and her beloved kingdom.

New Release: Fearless (Mirrorworld) by Cornelia Funke

Fearless (Mirrorworld) by Cornelia Funke is released this week, the sequel to Funke's Reckless (Mirrorworld). If you haven't read Reckless yet, the Kindle edition is still promotion priced at $2.99. My niece loved Reckless so I imagine Fearless will be on our summer reading list.

Book description:

Jacob Reckless returns once again to the Mirrorworld--filled with profound characters, extraordinary creatures, and epic life-or-death treasure hunts that could only come from the mind of the master storyteller of our generation, Cornelia Funke.

Jacob Reckless has only a few months left to live. He's tried everything to shake the Fairy curse that traded his life for his brother's--legends such as the All-Healing Apple, the Well of Eternal Youth, the blood of a northern Djinn. And yet hope after hope is extinguished. After months of fruitless searching, Jacob journeys through his father's mirror one final time to deliver the bad news to Fox.

But there they hear of one last possibility--an item so legendary that not even Mirrorworlders believe it exists: a crossbow that can kill thousands, or heal one, when shot through the heart. But a Goyl treasure hunter is also searching for the prized crossbow. Jacob must find it first--and somehow convince Fox to do whatever it takes to save him.

Philip Pullman: teach all children fairy tales and Bible verses

From Philip Pullman: teach all children fairy tales and Bible verses:

Pullman, a bestselling author and former teacher, said the children's stories were "vital" for youngsters, claiming they are what they need "most of all" in education.

All children ought to know the most famous tales, he said as he implored parents, teachers and relatives to read or perform them.

He added that families and communities did not tend to sit together and swap stories nowadays, because they are distracted by television and the internet.

Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival yesterday, Pullman read from his 2012 book of Grimm's fairytales "for young and old" as he joked children should be exposed to stories, "the bloodthirstier the better".

There's a lot more in the article and it promotes Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version, of course, but the message and call to arms is sound.

And it's fascinating that the avowed atheist includes the Bible in the list, but whatever your leanings, it is important to know Bible stories (whether you espouse them religiously or not), Greek and other country's myths, and fairy tales to better understand our Western culture and history.

And I myself cannot recommend Bluebeard and its mates highly enough. Once a kid hits the right age, this is the one I get begged for the most--and it is not forgotten. I recently presented a career night to 16-18 year olds and one of the young women in the audience remembered Bluebeard from when I told it to her when she was 9, half her life ago.

Bluebeard was a hit with all of them, too.

Cinderella Tales From Around the World

Cinderella Tales From Around the World has dropped 10% in price for the paperback edition, the first time it has been discounted on Amazon since it's release in November. Not much of a drop, but better than nothing! Not sure how long it will last but it's there. It remains $39.99 at B&N and elsewhere.

Castle for Sale in New York

Armory for sale. Built in 1894 by the state of New York for the National Guard Amsterdam, NY $895,000

Not, it's not a post about a new book. It's a real castle for sale, In the U.S. How often does that happen? So this has been sitting open in my tabs for a few weeks now and I have to share it. While I wouldn't want to own a castle, this is tempting at such a bargain price. There are more images of round turret rooms and such on the listing site.

The decorator in me would have a ball. The definite maintenance headaches make me happy I'm not rich enough to own it. Not that it isn't in great shape. I am not saying that. But my 10 year old house has enough maintenance issues, let alone the ones that must exist in this behemoth.

In Fairy Land Exhibit and Why Print Fairy Tales Matter by Dr Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario

Dr Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario has a blog at Doc-in-Boots where she recently shared her speech, WHY PRINT FAIRY TALES MATTER, which she presented for the opening of the In Fairy Land exhibit at Monash University. Monash is in Australia, so I know it's not convenient for many readers here to visit, but thankfully there is also a virtual exhibition with many, many images to view online. Edited to add link to the exhibition catalog PDF which contains all of the images and more explanations.

From the exhibition's site:

This exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to see the fairy tale marvels that lie within the Monash Rare Books Collection and is a tribute to the efforts of its caretakers.

The exhibition can be seen from 6 March - 7 June 2013 at the Rare Books Exhibition space, Level 1, ISB wing, Sir Louis Matheson Library, Clayton campus, Monash University.

And from WHY PRINT FAIRY TALES MATTER:

However, collections like this shouldn’t simply be a preservation of the past. I don’t want to see these tales confined to the Rare Books reading rooms, though I’m incredibly grateful they’re safe here! The tales you see today, kept whole through ink, paper, thread and leather, should continue to be read, to be told, to influence. My hope is that exhibitions such as this will encourage people to learn more about Cinderellas and Jacks and Snow Whites, about talking birds and wise fish, and all sorts of marvels, some sublime and some downright bizarre. My hope is that you will discover tales you never knew and read them and tell them and retell them and pass them on. My hope is that you’ll take the time to become acquainted with the times and places that reshaped tales, providing them with oddities and idiosyncrasies that may have lasted for just one telling but remain to be discovered in the pages of a book.

I think, too, that exhibitions like this allow us all to see the place that fairy tale holds in literature. Fairy tales aren’t simple. They aren’t simply for kids – and in many cases, you’d probably rather the kids weren’t reading them. While they did pass along morals and advice, more often than not, they also cheated the status quo, cheekily overturning the limitations imposed by society upon its subjects. I’ve always loved reminding students that the princess didn’t always obediently, passively kiss the frog when he puckered up– she used to slam him up against the wall, fed up with his impositions and determined not to share her bed with a slimy amphibian. It’s only then he turned into a prince, proving that getting mad can win a girl her prince charming.

It matters that we understand who told fairy tales, how they came to be written and illustrated, how they were adapted by their authors. While we have lost the multitude of voices who shared and invented the heroes, the villains, the transformations, magical spells and enchanted objects, left with only random impressions of the words recorded, edited, re-arranged, we do have a vast catalogue of printed words and marvellous illustration. Some are well read, some are scribbled over, some were treasured, some were studied, but the tales in print are just as inventive, diverse and creative as those tales from their cousin, the oral tradition.

A long excerpt, but do click through and read it all, too.

Article: The Plutonium 'Gate To Hell' Found

From Pluto's Gate Discovered: The Plutonium 'Gate To Hell' Found In Ancient City Of Hierapolis:

According to the Italian news agency ANSA, a team of archeologists working in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis in southwestern Turkey claims to have located the Plutonium, or Pluto's Gate -- an ancient pilgrim site considered the entryway to the underworld. A small cave near the temple of Apollo, the Plutonium grew in association with death from deadly gases it emitted.

Francesco D'Andria of the University of Salento announced the discovery during a press conference in Turkey in mid-March, according to La Gazzetta Del Mezzogiorno.

D'Andria told Discovery News he also found remains of the temple, a pool used by pilgrims and a series of steps.

“We could see the cave's lethal properties during the excavation. Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes,” D'Andria added, according to Discovery News.

I love this stuff. Reading the article evoked many thoughts of Persephone and the rest. How terrifying the place must be when you see living creatures dying instantly by approaching it.

Bargain Ebook: Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs is discounted to $1.99 in ebook format as part of Amazon's April 100 Books for $3.99 or Less . It usually hovers in the $7+ range. For me, it is one of the cleverest mermaid book titles ever. Kudos to whoever thought that one up.

Book description:

Lily Sanderson has a secret, and it's not that she has a huge crush on gorgeous swimming god Brody Bennett, who makes her heart beat flipper-fast. Unrequited love is hard enough when you're a normal teenage girl, but when you're half human, half mermaid, like Lily, there's no such thing as a simple crush.

Lily's mermaid identity is a secret that can't get out, since she's not just any mermaid—she's a Thalassinian princess. When Lily found out three years ago that her mother was actually a human, she finally realized why she didn't feel quite at home in Thalassinia, and she's been living on land and going to Seaview High School ever since, hoping to find where she truly belongs. Sure, land has its problems—like her obnoxious biker-boy neighbor, Quince Fletcher—but it has that one major perk: Brody. The problem is, mermaids aren't really the casual dating type—the instant they "bond," it's for life.

When Lily's attempt to win Brody's love leads to a tsunami-sized case of mistaken identity, she is in for a tidal wave of relationship drama, and she finds out, quick as a tailfin flick, that happily ever after never sails quite as smoothly as you planned.

Bargain Ebooks: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold and Other C. S. Lewis Titles

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis is temporarily discounted from $10 to $2.99 in ebook format. Several of Lewis's other titles are similarly discounted, including On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature and Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories.

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold uses the Cupid and Pysche myth for its inspiration and so if quite fitting for SurLaLune.

Book description:

“I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer . . . Why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

Haunted by the myth of Cupid and Psyche throughout his life, C.S. Lewis wrote this, his last, extraordinary novel, to retell their story through the gaze of Psyche’s sister, Orual. Disfigured and embittered, Orual loves her younger sister to a fault and suffers deeply when she is sent away to Cupid, the God of the Mountain. Psyche is forbidden to look upon the god’s face, but is persuaded by her sister to do so; she is banished for her betrayal. Orual is left alone to grow in power but never in love, to wonder at the silence of the gods. Only at the end of her life, in visions of her lost beloved sister, will she hear an answer.

"Till We Have Faces succeeds in presenting with imaginative directness what its author has described elsewhere as ‘the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live’ . . . [It] deepens for adults that sense of wonder and strange truth which delights children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and other legends of Narnia." —New York Times

"The most significant and triumphant work that Lewis has . . . produced." —New York Herald Tribune

Assume More Stories to Tell

Princess with a Spindle by Hanna Hirsch-Pauli 

A recent post at Belle Jar, Fifteen Assumptions That Might Be Useful To Make, has been making rounds on the web and for some reason, I clicked through and read it. And I was glad I did for the list is lovely and holds many truisms about life but what made it stand out to me, was the unexpected #13:

13. Assume that there will always be more stories to tell, or at the very least new ways of reinterpreting old fables.

Of course, I would say "fairy tales" instead of "fables" or more appropriately "folk tales" but that sounds less romantic for a list like this.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who creates and reads and shares the tales.

Bargain Picture Book: Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Gennady Spirin

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Gennady Spirin is a bargain priced hardcover picture book. Usually $17.99, it is currently $5.00 on Amazon. I didn't have this one myself, only Spirin's The Tale of The Firebird, which is gorgeous.

Book description:

Gennady Spirin has taken a favorite childhood tale and imbued it with charm, dressing his bears in Renaissance costumes and providing whimsical and charming furniture designed for their country dwelling. Each spread—painted in watercolor, pen, and ink—brings renewed life to this endearing children’s classic in a way that only a master illustrator can. No wonder Goldilocks want to sample the bears’ porridge, sit on their chairs, and rest on their beds!