The Kalevala contains the folk legends of Finland, passed on in rhythmic verse through the centuries by rune singers, story tellers.
Kalevala Murals adorn the dome of the National Museum of Finland
The oldest themes, which include the origin of Earth, have their roots in distant, unrecorded history and could be as old as 3,000 years.
Finland was emerging, when the Kalevala was first published in the nineteeth century , from 600 years of Swedish rule and domination.
The Kalevala swept through Finnish consciousness, igniting feelings of national identity and a great flourishing in all the arts. "For Finnish intelligentsia the Kalevala became the emblem of the nation’s past, nationality, language and culture; a foundation on which national identity was to be built."
The Kalevala was recorded by Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), a doctor who traveled to the far reaches of Finland where the surviving rune singers could still be found. The Kalevala was first published by Lönnrot in 1835; a more complete version was published in 1849.The Kalevala has been translated into 61 languages.
This is a detail from the museum dome murals painted by Akseli Gallen-Kallela; he also painted the scene below of Kullervo.
Tolkien and the Kalevala
J.R.R.Tolkien, as a philologist and master of many arcane languages including Old Norse, Old Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English, also learned Finnish, enabling him to read the Kalevala.
"Tolkien was strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature, Germanic and Norse mythologies, Finnish mythology, the Bible, and Greek mythology. The works most often cited as sources for Tolkien's stories include Beowulf, the Kalevala, the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga saga and the Hervarar saga1. Tolkien himself acknowledged Homer, Oedipus, and the Kalevala as influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. His borrowings also came from numerous Middle English works and poems. "
The stories of the Hobbit and Middle Earth are an amalgam comprised of Tolkien' s wonderful imagination, legends and folklore from many cultures. Here is an excerpt from one of his letters regarding the influence of the Kalevala: "The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion)"― J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 257
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Movies and Children's Classics Reinvented
Smaug and Frozen are Hot
Peter Jackson's violence-laden Smaug, and Disney's sanitized -- but delightful -- version of The Snow Queen, Frozen, combined worldwide box office results have now passed the half billion dollar mark.
Jackson is a visionary and has brought Tolkien to multitudes that would otherwise never have ventured to middle earth. I hope this leads to more reading of his books.
I also hope that parents use discernment in not allowing young children to see The Desolation of Smaug...the combination of 3-D, intense Dolby sound, frightening fight scenes and a very long fierce dragon scene will not stimulate pleasant dreams for kiddies.
No one knows the scale of the cumulative effect of continued exposure to violence on children...but how can it be other than scary and disturbing?
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The Hunger Games-- Catching Fire remains Hot
This dystopian sequel to the original Hunger Games has passed 838 million at the box office...few people have questioned the savage premise behind the films and the YA books by Suzanne Collins. Here is an excerpt from a more thoughtful review by Denver Post Film Critic, Lisa Kennedy...
"...It's cruel. It's cynical. It makes great TV!
Catching Fire delivers on the grim, roiling promises of the original. Lawrence and Hutcherson remain compelling as the District 12 denizens who continue to do a romantic minuet dictated by necessity but also authentic fondness.
Oscar-winning writers Simon Beaufoy ("Slumdog Millionaire") and Michael Arndt ("Little Miss Sunshine," credited here as Michael deBruyn) deepen the themes at the heart of Collins' novels: What are the differences between allies and friends? How does one trust not only others but also one's own feelings? Which adults can be confided in, and are there any institutions worth believing in?
It's heady stuff in a PG-13 film, albeit one that depicts the violence and coercive force of an oppressive regime..."
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Why are the Hunger Games so extremly popular? I can think of several reasons why these films are popular, but I don't understand why they are so extraordinarily popular.
There are other films with female heroines, dystopian futures, embattled good people valiantly surviving powerful evil oppressors. Why this one? I asked this question of one of my grandsons. He suggested that, "Perhaps it's because the Hunger Games films deal with the darkside, and these are difficult times we have been going through."
I'm hoping parents understand that there is an air of realism in the Hunger Games films not found in Disney or Miyazaki films.
There are unanswered questions about the effects of this dark fantasy on children wherein a teenage girl and her boyfriend must kill and destroy other people in sanctioned mayhem.
Hollywood decision makers, video game producers, and probably YA authors will no doubt continue to use violence for its own sake as a way to make money.
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"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowsip of the Ring
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The Children's Kalevala - an epic Dog Story
Mauri Kunnas, Finnish author and illustrator of many exceptional children's books has interpreted the Kalevala in a wonderful book, Canine Kalevala. The characters are played by dogs. It is unfortunate that this gifted man is relatively unknown in the English speaking world.
His other books in English translation include the story of the Vikings, Robin Hood, and The Story of Finnish Elves.
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There is no denying the fact: the American shelter system is broken...
by CA Wulff...Author, animal advocate, and voice for animal rescue...
"According to the Humane Society HSUS and the ASPCA, it is estimated that between 5-8 million animals enter the shelter system every year, and of those, about 60% of dogs and 70% of cats are killed.
That’s in spite of all the people in animal rescue who work every day to save lives. It’s such a huge problem that there are multiple focuses to try to save as many pets as possible. There are rescues that pull pets from shelters, transporters that move pets from places where they will likely die to places where they have a better chance of being adopted, networkers who share urgent animals on social media, groups that help stray pets find their way back to their families, everybody is working toward a common goal: save lives. So why is there so much divisiveness when it comes to shelter reform?..."
Barking Planet Productions is proud to publish her excellent books; here is a link: CA Wulff
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The Tea Fan Blog...I was surprised to find a comprehensive, appreciative, and personal
Kalevala post on a blog written by a young woman named Jenner Sharp with a sweeping mind and great curiosity...Here are excerpts from her description of herself...
"I am currently applying to college for bassoon performance, music composition, and English writing. I’m not very interested in things that make money, hence the majors... I play four instruments: the piano, the violin, the flute, and the bassoon. I am fascinated by the human race and how the human mind works. I frequently obsess over Vermont, Oregon, Iceland, Jane Austen, The Hunger Games, and the sound of rain"...
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FSD-Freedom Service Dogs" is a nonprofit organization that enhances the lives of people with disabilities by rescuing dogs and custom training them for individual client needs. Clients include children, veterans and active duty soldiers, and other adults. Their disabilities include Autism, Traumatic Brain Injury, Cerebral Palsy, Spinal Cord Injuries, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)."
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Life, Interrupted: By a Dog
by Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 25-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young woman with cancer, appears regularly on Well in the New York Times..Here are excerpts from a recent post:
"Ever since a therapy dog visited me in the hospital during my first cycle of chemotherapy in May 2011, I became fixated on the idea of having a dog of my own one day.
When you are talking to a dog about cancer, there are no judgments or taboos. The therapy dog, a small energetic King Charles Spaniel, jumped around on my hospital bed playfully tugging at the blanket on my lap. For the first time since I had fallen ill, I didn’t feel like I was being treated as if I were made of porcelain. The therapy dog made me feel like a human first, and a cancer patient second..."
Here is a link, Life, Interrupted, to read this and other articles written for Well by Suleika Jaoud
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"This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof"...Neil Gaiman
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Out in space, on the other side of the sun, is the Planet of the Dogs®..
Dogs have always lived there in peace and happiness.
Long ago there were no dogs on Planet Earth.
There came a time when peaceful lives were being disrupted...Invaders threatened Green Valley... Children were kidnapped and taken to the Castle in the Mist… two of Santa’s reindeer were kidnapped and there would be no Christmas.
The Planet Of The Dogs series tells of how dogs came down to earth to help bring peace, to teach people about love, loyalty, and courage – and to save Christmas.
The illustration is from Planet Of TheDogs
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Click here for Sample Chapters of the Planet Of The Dogs series
Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...
Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.
Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at [email protected] and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"
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Good News! The Little Prince Returns to New York ...January 24, 2014 to April 27
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's original manuscript and illustrations for the Little Prince, as well as letters and artifacts will be exhibited at the Morgan Library & Museum. It sounds terrific. Here are excerpts from their website :
"Since its publication seventy years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince has captivated millions of readers throughout the world. It may come as a surprise that this French tale of an interstellar traveler who comes to Earth in search of friendship and understanding was written and first published in New York City, during the two years the author spent here at the height of the Second World War.
As he prepared to leave the city to rejoin the war effort as a reconnaissance pilot, Saint-Exupéry appeared at his friend Sylvia Hamilton's door wearing his military uniform. "I'd like to give you something splendid," he said, "but this is all I have." He tossed a rumpled paper bag onto her entryway table. Inside were the manuscript and drawings for The Little Prince, which the Morgan acquired from her in 1968..."
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"Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
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Know About These 5 Essential Nutrients for Healthy Dogs
Here is an excerpt from a recent article on Way Cool Dogs, the website with ongoing proven advice, information, and insights for dog lovers
Keeping your dog happy and healthy can be daunting. After all, you control his diet and you want to make sure he’s getting all the nutrients he needs. Every person requires a different diet, depending on his or her body composition and health. The same intricacies apply to your four-legged companion, except he doesn’t understand
Read more: Nutrition for Dogs
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Do Legends Live on with the same power on the Internet as they do in Reading Books?
In the New York Times, author David Mikis wrote a lucid and thought provoking Op Ed Article, In Praise of (Offline) Slow Reading
Here are two excerpts..."The digital world offers us many advantages, but if we yield to that world too completely we may lose the privacy we need to develop a self. Activities that require time and careful attention, like serious reading, are at risk; we read less and skim more as the Internet occupies more of our lives. And there’s a link between selfhood and reading slowly, rather than scanning for quick information, as the Web encourages us to do. Recent work in sociology and psychology suggests that reading books, a private experience, is an important aspect of coming to know who we are...
"After all the Internet’s many diversions, people still yearn for the solitary refuge of reading, since a book provides a space for reflection, a private therapy that is hard to find online. Most of us remember from childhood the experience of being head-over-heels in a book, utterly absorbed. We entered into a strange, enchanted world and traveled with an author’s characters; we lived their lives with them. There’s nothing in the online world that can fulfill the promise that we get in a work of fiction to give us a sustained picture of the self..."
David Mikics is the author, most recently, of “Slow Reading in a Hurried Age.”
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From Children's Librarian, Elizabeth Bird..."New York Public Library's Children's Literary Salon is pleased to announce our upcoming program on Saturday, February 1st at 2:00 p.m. in the South Court Auditorium:
Mary Poppins
If you are a Mary Poppins fan, this interview --
Not Quite All Spoonfuls of Sugar -- from the New York Times is most interesting.
M.L. Travers, the author, was a tortured soul who wrote a children's classic. After years of resistance, she allowed the book to be made into an upbeat Disney film. In this interview, the actors discuss, with candor, the motivations and character of both Walt Disney and M.L. Travers. Both Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks had conducted extensive background and character research for the film Saving Mr Banks...here is the excellent trailer: Saving Mr Banks.
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Toad, Mole and Badger Leap to a Bigger Stage
The Wind in the Willows, Danced in London
In her enthusiastic New York Times review, ROSLYN SULCAS describes a new dance based interpretation of Kenneth Grahame's classic story...here are excerpts...
“ 'Let my creatures live again,' says the narrator at the start of Will Tuckett’s stage adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows,” the children’s book by Kenneth Grahame that has been beloved here almost since it was first published in 1908...
Mr. Tuckett’s “The Wind in the Willows” isn’t primarily a dance piece, even though the principal characters are played by dancers and their movements are all choreographed. Its real focus is the picturesque language spoken by the narrator (Tony Robinson) who plays Grahame, conjuring these characters and the pastoral world that is perhaps a last moment of English cultural innocence before the onslaught of the Great War...
The idea permeating the poet Andrew Motion’s lively adaptation of Grahame’s text is one that informs all of literature: The words we read or hear are fodder for our imagination, as we flesh out and create our own images of, and ideas about, the tales we are told"...
Here is a link to a video for the production, playing until Feb 1, 2014, at the West End's Duchess Theater.
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Also on the London Stage...
Peter Pan by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Maria Tatar was quoted extensively by BBC News in an article by Vincent Dowd entitled "Why did theatre turn its back on original Peter Pan?", referring to the latest RSC production of a heavily revised version of Peter Pan.
Here are excerpts from her insightful analysis.
"It goes back to the Brothers Grimm and beyond: stories which persist in the collective unconscious often have a darkness underneath."
"Peter Pan has the same basic narrative that so many great children's classics share. The protagonists are often orphans: if possible, you kill off the parents on page one or the author finds some other way to push them to one side."Think of the Narnia books or The Wizard of Oz. Think of Harry Potter or some of the works of E Nesbit. The children have to overcome harsh realities and meet terrible monsters or whatever. Young readers are enthralled...
...You can change anything else in the story but even the most radical new version of Peter Pan would need to preserve two things. There's the idea of the children learning to cope without parents - that's the heart of the book and without it there's no story.
"And it would be a very brave director who did away with all the flying. Last year I went to an American version of Peter Pan which in some ways was a little flat and disappointing. But the moment Peter flew out above our heads, the entire theatre was in raptures."
Maria Tatar is the author of many highly regarded books on children's literature; she chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches multiple courses.
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The poster above was from the original stage production of Peter Pan in 1904. Here are Professor Seth Lerer's insightful comments on the play excerpted from his reader's history of Children's Literature...
"...Peter Pan is a play that looks back to a lost age of Victorian security. It seeks a meaning in fantastic rather than empirical or scientific life. It sees life as theatrical and performative, rather than as authentic and sincere. It exposes the conventions of social life as conventions, and in the process calls attention to the gap betweem morality and propriety...
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Goodreads membership has nearly doubled in the last year to 25 million...
What does this mean..?
More readers?
More joiners?
More Amazon?
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Once again, I find myself somewhat awed by the generous spirited and caring dog owners and organizations that are helping children and adults of all ages. The following is from the website of this excellent Canadian oganization...
"...Therapy dogs work with a handler to provide programs and services that improve clients’ physical, emotional and communication abilities. Humans and animals share a powerful bond. That bond can be a source of comfort, peace and relief for those who suffer from physical or emotional pain.
Therapy dogs can sometimes achieve results when other therapies have failed. Some of the healing benefits of therapy dogs include reducing blood pressure, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. Our teams regularly visit more than 60 health care and social services facilities throughout the National Capital region and surrounding communities. You can also find therapy dogs in local schools with the R.E.A.D. program, which helps children deal with reading challenges.
Ottawa Therapy Dogs have made an excellent video about R.E.A.D...kids, volunteers, teachers, and librarians are all seen in a montage that shows the actual process and benefits of reading with therapy dogs.
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Dogs and Cats...
a video smile...You Shall Not Pass, Dog...
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Who are these dogs? ...They are carrying on a Barking Planet tradition...explanation next month...
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Dogster is closing, alas...the internet world has a life of its own.
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A dog is lying by the side of the road...What do I do? What are my options? I want to be helpful, but this is all new to me... For answers, examples, true stories and more, visit Sunbear Squad...Let the experience of compassionate dog lovers guide you. Here's the Link: SunbearSquad - -
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''If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." Albert Einstein -
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