Artist Series at Rock & Sling

Thank you to Rock & Sling for the opportunity to share one of the books that is inspiring me right now. I haven't read The Wide-Awake Princess to my kids in years, but it is still speaking to me. Now more than ever. You can read the whole blog post here.



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Yes.

Does it matter, 

the way sunlight pokes through the blinds 

and lands on a vinyl seat at a Chinese buffet 

where you have come to redeem the day? 

Yes.

 Every ounce of effort spent towards good counts. 

Every bit of good you catch coming back counts, too. 

Those fairy tales you loved as a child (still love, it just feels a little different now,) 

that endless Story of good vs. evil? 

You are in the middle of that story, 

finding endless variations on it day by day. 

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This is For You

Not long ago, she offered me a drink she had made: bright green, unnatural, an offering of love and self.

If you know the story of Persephone, or if you know much about fairies, you are familiar with the dangers of eating the food offered to you by certain beings. It binds you to them, makes you a captive in their land. And childhood is certainly a foreign land to those of us who have been away. Adults develop a strange accent. I have found it good to live close to the borders, to make excursions in, to stay fluent in the old language. 

Spend time with them, and they will offer you things. Of course it’s risky, but love is. 

I drank the whole thing.

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Found, Day 12

From a book I loved in my childhood and still love now:

Now I could use the sword Gull, he thought. But since all I have is my sheath-knife, I’ll have to make do with that. I can’t let the snake eat the old woman. And he rushed forward, waving his knife.

from “The Maiden in the Castle of Rosy Clouds,” by Harald Östenson,

Great Swedish Fairy Tales, illustrated by John Bauer

At the last moment the sword he needs but does not know how to get materializes in his hands, and the young man saves the old woman. Each of the things he needs, in fact, he finds only in the middle of an act of faith.

*     *     *

So imagine Heroic, setting out on a journey because of everything that should not be that is. And the journey is much harder and much longer than she (or maybe he) imagined. And he (or maybe she) keeps getting distracted—by old crones bearing strange gifts, by animals in need, by side adventures that make no sense. And doing the right thing does not seem to get her or him anywhere closer to setting things right. And he (or she) gains allies but not answers. And in the end, of course, all those things that kept Heroic’s path anything-but-straight were exactly what was necessary to face the giant/the dragon/the troll.

*     *     *

And what if, instead of looking at how untidy a life is, how it refuses to match up to whatever you think it’s supposed to match up to, you looked for real at the cracks and tears, the flaws and interruptions and stumblings, and made it your job to read those things, to listen deeply, and tell the story they tell you? 

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Foolscap

I first encountered the word as a word-unto-itself because it is written in bold print at the top of page 222 in the Webster’s New Dictionary and Thesaurus, Concise Edition my mom bought for me to take to college. The idea of a jester’s hat wasn’t new to me, but the idea of the word, all the letters squished together into one thing, was.

The definition seemed maybe a little disappointing at first:

[fōōlz’kap] n a size of writing paper 13 by 16 inches, in the US, originally bearing the watermark of a fool’s cap and bells.

Maybe it’s because I keep running into it, flipping through the fs in search of definitions and useful/beautiful/magical new words, but it turned out to be a word that captured me fully, after all.

Because what would it be like if every page that I put words to bore that mark, reminding me of the possible foolishness of my words?

There is always the danger that what I am mistaking for art or communication is really my pride, my immaturity, my blindness—my complete foolishness, in fact—screaming from the page.

Would I put words on a page like that more carefully? Would the mark serve as a disclaimer to readers, warning of the danger in thinking words could pose as truth—that they could adequately express something as elusive as a thought or feeling? Would it serve as a sort of visual caveat lector—“let the reader beware?”

It is something good to remember—the possibility that I am really only a fool trying to dress up as something I’m not.

There’s another aspect though, to a piece of paper like this, that captures my imagination.

Because what would it be like if every page that I put words to bore this mark, reminding me that there is more than one way to speak the truth?

Sometimes it’s the one dressed as a fool who can say the things that otherwise might not get said: the child who doesn’t know any better, the entertainer who’s there to console, the naïve younger son.

If I had that image right there to remind me, would the words come out more boldly? Would I worry so much about what others thought? Would I have more confidence that true things could speak out of a story, out of something beautiful or humorous—that maybe they had the power to penetrate more deeply that way?

It is something good to remember—the possibility that I might be able to say more dressed as a fool. 


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Wordless, Day 13

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In Honor of the Day...

I’d like to share my all-time favorite fairy tale with you: “The Queen,” by Anna Wahlenberg, from Great Swedish Fairy Tales, illustrated by John Bauer (translated by Holger Lundbergh--my copy has stories selected by Elsa Olenius and was published by Delacorte Press, 1973.)

It has a prince, of course, and romance. No dragon, though (or trolls, for that matter.) And guess what? They end up rescuing each other.

If only I could host a read-aloud on my blog…

What are some of your favorite love stories?

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Real and True

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want your children to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
                                                                                                    --Albert Einstein

I was once talking to a young girl about favorite things. “My favorite animal for years was the unicorn,” I told her. She looked at me very seriously. “Unicorns aren’t real.”

I can’t remember how I responded. I knew unicorns weren’t real, but I spent a generous portion of fourth and fifth grade drawing them and dreaming about them anyway.

I’m positive my parents didn’t read me fairy tales because they wanted me to believe in fairies. Or unicorns. Or because they thought the stories would give me a good grounding in math, or theology, or science. They read me those books because the stories were good, and because they contained deep truths about life—what it means to be foolish or clever or brave, how important it is to follow good advice and help others in need, and how there is more to life than what you can see and hear and taste.

So I’m curious—what are some of your favorite fairy tales, either as a child or now? I grew up on a lot of Scandinavian folk and fairy tales because of the wonderful books my grandfather, a history professor who specialized in Norwegian-American immigrants, gave as Christmas and birthday gifts. The kids and I have been reading through my old copy of Great Swedish Fairytales, illustrated by John Bauer, recently. I had forgotten just how beautifully-written it is, and I love it now more than ever. Two of my more recent favorites are The Empty Pot, by Demi, and The Wide-Awake Princess, by Katherine Paterson.

How about you?

East of the Sun and West of the Moon

There’s been a dangerous development of sorts at our house. Not that we haven’t been on the cusp of it for years, but recently some of my husband’s and my individual passions have become very much intertwined. I’m worried we won’t be able to balance each other out.

I don’t mean to make it sound like we’ve never shared interests, before. Not at all—I married another musician, for one thing—one who, like me, actually read books for pleasure while pursuing a graduate degree in music. When we go to a bookstore together we will invariably meet up in the children’s section, wherever else each of us happens to wander in the meantime. We have similar or at least complementary opinions about family, music, art, education, and lifestyle. But we’ve always kept little niches to ourselves, too. It gets dangerous, otherwise—nobody to keep us from going overboard.

In terms of books, we agree that owning them and reading them is good. But he gets a lot more excited about rare books than I do. I am happy to have an ex-library edition of something if it is a good book. The more worn and dog-eared it is, the more I figure it has been loved and has proved its worth. To him, the writing is still supremely important, but a book is only enhanced by being old, leather-bound, gilt-edged, and rare. I appreciate those things, but the fact remains that I am stingy, and always less likely to buy the fancy version. Thus—balance.

Recently, though, my husband discovered Calla Editions, distributed by Dover Books. These good people have a short list of books (they’ve only been around since 2008), but many of them are reprints of classics: Grimm's Fairy Tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham, The Arabian Nights illustrated by René Bull, Stories from Hans Christian Andersen illustrated by Edmund Dulac, The Knave of Hearts illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, and maybe one of my all-time favorite books, East of the Sun and West of the Moon illustrated by Kay Nielsen. They are beautiful, hardcover books, and they are priced like nice hardcovers, not like rare antiques.




And so we have come to own, among others, a reprint of East of the Sun and West of the Moon. I hardly know what to say about this book, it is so close to me. I grew up on a shortened version, with only six of the fifteen original stories, published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. in 1977. (The original book came out in 1914; the Calla Edition is a reproduction of that.) It is a collection of Scandinavian fairy tales culled from Asbjörnsen and Moe’s “Norske Folkeeventyr,” Asbjörnsen and Moe being to Norway what the Brothers Grimm were to Germany. The stories are wonderful—spare, mysterious, full of trolls and princesses and impoverished young men who make their way in the world through their own cunning and the help of magical creatures they have aided along the way. But the artwork—that is the book’s magnificence. I believe the illustrations have single-handedly defined what my Scandinavian heritage means to me—well, maybe along with the Norwegian desserts we always ate at Christmastime and multiple readings of D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths. But really—the artwork is amazing. Kay Nielsen was a Danish artist whose name was linked with “the golden age of illustration” along with artists like Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. His work has distinct Art Nouveau and Japanese influences. It is stylized, graceful, and full of magic. The color illustrations in this book are drenched with color and detail, and the black and white illustrations are equally detailed, but more austere. I am at a loss to tell you today if I love gnarled weeping trees, stylized flowers, rocky terrains, and a particular sort of play of light against dark because I was born with that aesthetic or because of this book. Follow this link to see what I'm talking about.

Honestly, this book and the others like it qualify as fine art as much as literature.

And so passions have collided. “But see, it’s not dangerous,” my husband told me yesterday. “Because we can actually afford these editions.” Which in my mind is precisely where the danger lies.

You're Not Bored, Are You?

My kids are still relatively young, and I don't think it would matter if we were homeschooling or not--I spend a lot of time reading to them. Read-aloud time is a pretty special time. Take all the years my parents spent reading to me combined with all the years I've spent reading to my children, and in my mind you've got the perfect equation: books = love. It's not always perfect and cozy--there is plenty of time spent jockeying for seats, fighting over pillows and engaging in overly-aggressive games of footsie. Overall, though, it's a favorite pastime.

Beyond all the family-togetherness, I love the books, too. I can't tell you how many times I have been stunned by the number of good books out there. The really excellent picture books offer, usually in 28 pages, beautiful artwork and a great story (or idea or information,) in writing that is simple enough for a child to understand but elegant and engaging enough for their parent to appreciate. As perfect as poetry. Really, there's no reason to be bored reading to your kids!

Did you know this stuff was out there? Biographies, fairy tales, poetry, music appreciation, art history, science? So much for little dreamers and their parents to sink their teeth into. The aesthetic, mood and stories of Ezra Jack Keats, Jean de Brunhoff, and Great Swedish Fairy Tales illustrated by John Bauer are as powerful for me now as they were when I was a child. What were some of your favorite picture books as a child? What about now as an adult?