REVIEW: Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs

by Anne Ursu

“A boy got a splinter in his eye, and his heart turned cold. Only two people noticed. One was a witch, and she took him for her own. The other was his best friend. And she went after him in ill-considered shoes, brave and completely unprepared.” 

Hazel has moved from a more progressive, creative school to a traditional school in a new neighborhood. She feels so out of place. All the things she enjoyed about learning are discouraged. Her only touchstone is her best friend Jack. They let their imaginations run wild, inventing stories and playing baseball as superheros who are not allowed to use their powers. However, one day, Jack gets something in his eye, and he is completely different. He is mean to Hazel and doesn't care about what they used to care about. And then he disappears. Everyone thinks he went to visit his aunt, but Hazel knows something is wrong. She knows he was stolen by the Snow Queen. She must embark on a mission, facing wolves, witches, and ice, to save her best friend... who might not want to be saved.

To read more, see my review at Palimpsest.

REVIEW: Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

“She had a hundred reasons: because Bear had carved a statue of her in the center of the topiary garden, because she could always make him laugh, because he'd let her return to the station, because he won at chess and lost at hockey, because he ran as fast as he could to polar bear births, because he had seal breath even as a human, because his hands were soft, because he was her Bear. "Because I want my husband back," Cassie said.” 

Cassie has lived her whole life in her family's arctic research station. Her world is ice and science and tagging polar bears and survival. Her grandmother had told her fairy tales about her mother, the adopted daughter of the North Wind, who was supposed to marry the Polar Bear King but married a mortal instead. The North Wind was so angry that he threw the mother into the land of the trolls, never to be seen again. When Cassie grew up, she realized these were just stories to make her feel better about her mother's death. That is, until the Polar Bear King comes to claim Cassie as his wife. After agreeing to rescue her mother, Bear whisks Cassie away to his ice castle at the North Pole. She and Bear slowly and deeply fall in love, but when Cassie betrays Bear and he is torn from her side, she must brave the frozen wasteland to find him again.

To read more, see my review at Palimpsest.

Fairy Tale and Mythology Round Up: Fairy Tales as Literary Crack, Modern Reds, the Bullied Cinderella, Mythic Assholes, Norse vs Marvel Mythology, and Christmas Fairy Tales

It looks like November is another crazy month for me, so I am a little behind in my fairy tale news. Here is a digest of the interesting things I have found so far!

1) Catherynne M. Valente Speaks on Fairy Tales at NY ComicCon
Once Upon a Blog directed our attention to the wisdom of one of my favorite authors, Catherynne M. Valente who wrote The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Lead the Revels There. At NY ComicCon this year, Ms. Valente said:

"Here's the thing about fairy tales... They are the best-edited stories of all time... boiled down, espresso-like stories that go straight to the back of your reptile brain."

I love that idea. They are like sea stones, rolled around in the surf of hundreds or thousands of years to be stripped down to the essentials, the truths span all of time.

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2) Post Victorian Little Red Riding Hood
Tales of Faerie, as ever an pillar of fairy tale scholarship, distills Jack Zipes' The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood into a blog post exploration of what Red Riding Hood symbolizes in the modern age. She discusses how it is used to underline political, ecological, and gender equality issues, as well as more traditional interpretations.

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3) Cinderella: My Favorite Bully Story

The YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) had an excellent blog post about how Cinderella is a story about bullies. The special thing about Cinderella in comparison with other bully stories is that it doesn't dwell on the bullies. The bullies are an obstacle that Cinderella must face as she takes her destiny in to her own hands. 

"The stories I like—whether on my library shelves or playing out in my own neighborhood—are the ones where our teens don’t relinquish their pens to the bullies. They get help, stop it, or endure despite the high cost. But they go on writing their own story, singing their own song, toward a happily ever after that stands separate and apart from the attacks against them."

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Jupiter and Thetis by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

4) The Biggest Assholes in Greek Mythology
 The gloriously irreverent Io9 has created yet another hilarious list, the biggest assholes in Greek mythology, and Zeus is at the top of the list. The first half of the list sticks with the known assholes, but then we get into more obscure people, like Ixion, who pushed his father-in-law onto a bed of hot coals, went insane, tried to have sex with Hera, and ended up having sex with a cloud.

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5) 8 Things Marvel got Wrong about Thor and Norse Mythology

Io9, snarky as ever, lists the many..not so much errors, but differences between the Marvel Asgard and the old Norse Asgard. It makes me want to sit by the fire on a winter night and read some eddas. I do miss the clever, tricky wanderer Odin and the mischievous Loki and the doofus Thor and my favorite nightmare creature, Fenrir.

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6) Marks and Spencers Fairy Tale Ad

Apparently Christmas = Fairy Tales at Marks and Spencers! Here is a cute ad for their store that leads you through Alice in Wonderland, Little Red, the Wizard of Oz (with a female Tin Man and Lion), Hansel and Gretel and Arabian Nights. With a special cameo from Helena Bonham Carter! Once Upon a Blog has background and commentary.

That is all for now, though I have a lot more coming up! 

Friday Fun: Fairy Tale Ads

Here is a little bit of Friday fun that I found on Tales of Faerie. Lemmonpepper99 on You Tube has compiled a playlist of fairy tale TV ads dating all the way back to the 1930s!

It is interesting to see what themes the ads pull out while trying to sell something. Little Red Riding Hood is either about sex, safety, or personal power. Cinderella is more often than not about searching for things we desire or transformation. Sleeping Beauty is strangely comedic in most, and ends up being either about sleeping peacefully or waiting for what you want. The Goldilocks ones are always about "just right." 

I think my favorites were the Little Red Adidas commercial and the Oreo commercial for their animation, the Nokia one for finding fairy tales in every day life, and the GHD and 7up commercials where our heroines take their destiny into their own hands. 

Movies: A Tale Dark and Grimm will be an Henry Selick Movie!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

(breathe. Resume quasi-professional demeanor.)

A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz, is one of my favorite fairy tale adaptations of all time. Click here to read my review of it. Click here to read Adam Gidwitz's defense of dark fairy tales.

Now, it is going to be a movie with one of my favorite film artists at the helm, Henry Selick of Coraline and Nightmare Before Christmas.

If you watch the trailer you will see how well the story lends itself to Selick's style. 

OUAB has more details about the movie and what the book is about, so check her out. 

Articles: "Feminism" in Disney's Frozen and The Snow Queen

So I was full of lies when I said I wouldn't talk about Frozen anymore. Once Upon a Blog has really been cooking these last couple weeks, churning out really thought provoking articles on feminism, "feminisim," and blatant sexism in Disney's Frozen and other movies.

by briannacherrygarcia (DeviantArt)

1) Disney's Ugly Princesses (Just Kidding. Being Pretty is a Requirement.)

There has been a lot of internet outrage when Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation for Frozen, claimed it was really difficult to animate women:

 "Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry.”

Basically saying that it is more important for the character to be pretty than to express a range of emotions realistically.

This also brings back the conversation of how similar both the heroines in Frozen look like Rapunzel. I didn't realize how much until Once Upon a Blog showed this:

 

Ridiculous. It is like they did a test poll of what the most appealing face was and are cookie-cuttering it. OUAB has more thought provoking analysis. She also follows it up with a part 2: The Good Thing About Comas and Sleeping Princesses (?!) aka Ugly Princesses Not Allowed Pt 2, in which she explores the internet's outrage further, and branches out into the rest of the Disney Princess canon. 

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by Julia Griffin

2) How Disney Having Two Female Leads For "Frozen" Doesn't Approach How Fantastically Feminist "The Snow Queen" Already Was

This post might be my favorite because it examines the false feminism of Disney's Frozen ("Look! We have TWO heroines!") with the very real portrayals of female strength in the original "Snow Queen." OUAB discusses The Feminist Fangirl's post about why she is not supporting Frozen because, in the original, not only the protagonist, but 99% of the supporting cast are strong women of different ages and types: The Robber Girl, The Robber Girl's Mother, The Snow Queen, The Princess, The Garden Witch, The Lapland Woman, The Finland Woman, Grandmother, and the Lady Crow. It would have been a fantastic opportunity for Disney to showcase all kinds of female physicality, not just the cookie cutter princesses above. OUAB's post focuses not so much on ranting against Frozen, but as a on a lament for the original, and the lost opportunity there. 

(Though if you want ranting, the Feminist Fangirl post is fantastic!: "That Disney feels it’s necessary to take a female driven, female dominated story and cut it down to one princess protagonist with a dashing male helper/love interest, is honestly disgusting and one of the most blatant examples of Hollywood’s lack of faith in women in recent memory." Go girl! )

Also check out this really great blog post by Laura Athena: The Snow Queen: Visions of Female Strength for a great analysis of the women in "Snow Queen" (though the formatting makes it a bit difficult to read).

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3) "Frozen"s 3rd Trailer Is Worth Seeing + A Brief Discussion of Sisters in Fairy Tales (But Especially Tatterhood...)

OUAB, as am I, is intrigued by the new trailer, which focuses on the sisters, and she discusses how few tales of sisterly love there are in fairy tales. The main protagonists are usually princess and prince, or sister and brother rather than two sisters. I can now sort of see how it is "The Snow Queen" again, only the Snow Queen and Kai are combined into one character: Elsa. However, it does not excuse the above article's point that they are lauding themselves for having two lead female roles, when they cut down a cast of 10 female roles and replaced them with male love interests and sidekicks. 

Video: Who is the Wolf? Two Red Riding Hood Interpretations

I have a long backlog of adaptations I wished to discuss, and when I was exploring them, I came across two very different Little Red Riding Hood tales, one a short film, one a webcomic. While most interpretations focus on a young and handsome stranger as the wolf, these give us a different look at the wolves in our lives.

The Red Hood from Danishka Esterhazy on Vimeo.

The Red Hood first examines the wolf as "men." All men have an animal inside them waiting to strike. The enemy is not a predatory stranger, but the supposedly safe husband. And then the wolf is the girl. The wolf is not a specific gender. It is a primal and desperate urge inside all humankind.

Once Upon a Blog has a wonderful write up of it, including background and words from the director about her vision for the film. My joy at Red's killing was not as complete as Gypsy's however. When the husband stopped, and did not attack her, I saw a moment of doubt, of softness, like he might want to talk. But then her lover did not give him a chance to speak. That moment of the husband's hesitancy diminished the triumph I might have felt in her actions.

Redden by Maya Kern is a short webcomic which sends Red, a little girl, off to visit Grandmother, a terrifying monster in the woods. She is helped along the way by a wolf who gives her his pelt to "stay pure." When Grandmother see's Red, she decides to keep her as an apprentice. She forces her to set traps for the wolves of the forest, and  Red tries to helps them get free. But one day Grandmother catches her, and Red must fight for her life. The end is beautiful and heart wrenching.

The literal wolf in the tale is a friend whom Red must struggle to protect against Grandmother. Grandmother is the real predator.

illustration by Walter Crane

This brings up an interpretation of the fairy tale that is seldom explored in adaptations. The motif of the replaced relative comes up often in fairy tales. A mother is killed and replaced by a stepmother who is evil. The Brothers Grimm changed a lot of mothers to stepmothers so that the mother would remain good while still exploring the idea of someone who should love you treating you horribly. While the wolf in the forest is male, he goes and usurp's grandmother's place, even going so far as to wear her clothes, get in her bed and imitate her voice. A grandmother who used to be loving and kind, but now is cruel. The wolf is actually the grandmother. A loved one who has changed. Or in fact, a loved one who should be good but is evil. It is an interesting aspect to explore.

There are many wolves in the world. I think that is why "Little Red Riding Hood" is so captivating. We have wolves in every culture, in every walk of life: the person who appears to be good, but really is not. As much as the predatory male stranger is a strong and resonant interpretation, it would be interesting to see adapters to go in other directions to confront the other wolves in our lives.