Fantasy is everywhere
Another Reality
“You know very well you’re not real.”
“I am real!” said Alice, and began to cry.
“You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying,” Tweedledee remarked: “there’s nothing to cry about.”
“If I wasn’t real,” Alice said—half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous—“I shouldn’t be able to cry.”
“I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?” Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There -- Lewis Carroll
Illustration by John Tenniel
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Crossing Over -- The Threshold Between Reality and Fantasy
Children's books weave spells of enchantment so powerful that readers cross over into fantasy worlds as effortlessly as Lyra and Will vanish from Oxford and emerge in Cittagazze in Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife. Oz. Narnia, Wonderland, and Hogwarts all maintain their narrative coherence and become credible through the uncanny detail with which they are evoked. . .
Maria Tatar -- Enchanted Hunters
The illustration for Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is by Peter Bailey for the Folio Society.
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Another World
“He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?” ―
The illustration is by Dan French, Cosmicstories, Deviant Art
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Masters of Crossover Books
I remember the surprise on the part of journalists, publishers, and booksellers at the number of adult book buyers when Harry Potter (and later, Hunger Games) proved to be so very popular. As Maria Tatar, in the excerpt above, and others over the years have recognized, this was not a new phenomenon. The sheer volume of sales was unprecedented, but not the fact that so many adult readers were involved. Actually, adult readers had been finding and reading wonder tales and fantasy since Gulliver landed in the land of the Lilliputians -- if not before.
The illustration of Hogwarts is by Jim Kay.
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Never Ending Crossover
In addition to Lewis Carroll's Alice as a leader in nineteenth century crossover, there was Tolkien with his alternate world of wizards, elves,and dragons. Consider the strong appeal of Andersen and his many worlds ranging from Frozen and Match Girls to Ugly Ducklings and naked Emperors. And today, this ongoing fascination of adult readers with Wonder tales and fantasy ranges from Ursula Le Guin to Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman. It is an integral part of the world of books and reading.
The excerpt below on YA books, from Publisher's Weekly was part of the book world response that began with the Harry Potter book explosion. It was published in September 2012.
The illustration of the Little Match Girl is by Liiga Klavina, Deviant Art.
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Adults Read YA Books
55% of YA (Young Adult) Books Readers are Older than 18: "More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. According to a new study, fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 -- known as YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, a group that alone accounted for 28% of YA sales. And adults aren’t just purchasing for others -- when asked about the intended recipient, they report that 78% of the time they are purchasing books for their own reading. The insights are courtesy of Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age, an ongoing biannual study from Bowker Market Research that explores the changing nature of publishing for kids..."
Here's the link to read more of this article: publishersweekly
The illustration from the Philosopher's Stone is by Jim Kay.
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The Power of Love
“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves it's own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.”
― Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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Andersen . . . Stories for Children and Adults Alike
"Andersen combined humor, Christian sentiments, folklore, and original plots to form tales which amused and instructed old and young readers at the same time. More than any other writer of the 19th century, he fulfilled what Perrault had begun: to write tales such as 'The Ugly Duckling', 'The Little Mermaid', and the 'Princess and the Pea' which could be readily grasped by children and adults alike."
-- Jack Zipes... Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
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Dream
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
Photo by Robert W. Kelly/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
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Leena Krohn
"Leena Krohn, one of Finland's greatest writers, is the kind of storyteller who rewires your brain.She forces you to adopt to her pace, her particular and unique ideas of urgency, and of characterization and plot . . .In her fiction, however, this philosophical quest is often entwined with the visceral -- her novels are not abstractions, but alive with details of character, and setting and situation that display a keen eye for observation of the world around her."
Jeff VanderMeer, Introduction to Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction
Photo credit: Kauppalehti.fi.
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Transported Me The Furthest
I also found myself hypnotized by Leena Krohn, a Finnish writer whose collected stories and novels, rendered into English by many different translators, have just been published as a single volume, “Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction.” Broadly speaking, Krohn is a speculative writer; one of the novels in the collection, for example, consists of thirty letters written from an insect city. (“It is summer and one can look at the flowers face to face.”) Krohn writes like a fantastical Lydia Davis, in short chapters the length of prose poems. Her characters often have a noirish toughness; one, explaining her approach to philosophy, says that when she asks an existential question, “life answers. It is generally a long and thorough answer. . . Looking back, I realize that my favorite books this year were those that drew me away from the ordinary social world and into very different spaces. I don’t know why that was the dominant theme, but I know that these books transported me the furthest. —Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker
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This is the opening paragraph of Leena Krohn's Tainaron. . . . "First letter: How could I forget the spring when we walked in the University's botanical gardens: for there is such a park here in Tainaron, too, large and carefully tended. If you saw it you would be astonished, for it contains many plants that no one at home knows; even a species that flowers underground."
The photo by Katri Lassila is somewhere in Northern Finland.
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This is the title of an insightful and enthusiastic New Yorker article by Peter Berbergal. In addition to reflections on Krohn's work, it contains interviews. Here is an excerpt from his fascinating article
“Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction,” published late last year by Cheeky Frawg Books. . .The collection is the most extensive English translation yet of work by the celebrated Finnish writer, who has been a finalist for the prestigious World Fantasy Award and is a winner of the Finlandia Prize, the country’s most important literary honor. The novels, novellas, excerpts, and short stories included in the Cheeky Frawg collection are not narratives in the traditional sense so much as a series of contextualized impressions. Plot is hard to come by. Instead, Krohn offers up the narrated inner lives of characters trying to make sense of their environments, and of the other people whom they encounter. Many of the works are set in cities, but the worlds that Krohn’s characters inhabit never feel concrete: everything is mediated through particular characters’ perceptions. The reader is left with the sense of having intruded on someone’s dream, in which symbols are revelations of intimate details.
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Adults see him and know him as the very well-dressed, well-spoken, Mr. Hendersen. Children see him as a pelican wearing clothes. His dream is to be human. After some time, he gets a job as a ticket taker and chorus singer at the Opera. He is particularly fond of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.
His tutor and best friend is a early adolescent boy, Emil, who is also new to city life, his life having been recently uprooted when his parents divorced.
As a reader, following the Pelican's journey, I was seeing humanity and human customs through fresh, naive, eyes. The experiences of this outsider trying to become one of us, ranged from quite poignant to humorous.
Here is an excerpted early conversation on the occasion when Emil and the Pelican first meet and the Pelican asks how Emil ". . .'how you came to discover my' (here he hesitated for a moment) 'my origins?'
"Oh for goodness sake!" The boy was amazed. "There was no discovering about it. It's obvious."
"Not to humans," the bird argued. "Humans have such special eyes that they can't see anything with them except what they think they see. . . " Because I wear human clothes, I am human. That is the general consensus."
The Pelican and Emil have many experinces together and on their own. The Pelican has a thirst for knowledge and he loves the arts, especially, music. He is deeply disturbed, after he learns how to read, when he learns in the newspaper about war and human brutality.
Ultimately, he is discovered to be a bird, a pelican at that, and taken to a cage in the zoo. Emil, his loyal friend, helps him and there is a rather lovely ending.
Above, cover of Finnish edition.
Lower Illustration: The Pelican and Emil say goodbye in the movie by Magda Osinska.
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Movies, Video, and Independent Animation
Netflix and Amazon Plus are now showing Studio Ghibli Films, including all of the wonderful films by the extraordinary Hayao Miyazaki.
The image on the left is from the wonderful Kiki's Delivery Service. The story and the animation are terrific. Like wonder tales, survival or winning in Miyazaki films depends on endurance, courage, and using your wits. And there is hope at the end. Here is a link to the delightful trailer: Kiki
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Exceptional Independent Animation: Fantasy lives in many forms. Here are 3 totally different, outstanding, animated videos.
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Marie Curie
Meaningful, Excellent Animation, Important
150 Years Marie Curie's remarkable legacy in 2 minutes
An homage to a great scientist
Link: Marie Curie 2 minutes
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A Single Life
Pia travels through time through music
Charming and poignant multiple prize winner
Created by Job, Joris, and Marieke
Link to A Single Life 2.18 minutes
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Meanwhile
4 People trapped in memories
Brilliant and ominous
Many Prizes, presented by Royal College of Art with support by Blinkink
Directed by Stephen McNally, Score by Adam Cullen
Link to Meanwhile 5.13 minutes
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The New Secret Garden Movie -- Mixed Reception
Disney releases the new movie on the Internet. Audiences rate it highly. Critics are mixed.
I have read several mixed reviews of The Secret Garden after first being delighted by the promise of the trailer. There are several questions from reviewers about story revisions. However, there is great praise for Itxaso Moreno, who plays and reinvents the leading character, Mary Lennox. And the lush visuals of the land, the house, and the garden are well received and sometimes praised..
My own feeling is for a new young audience, seeing the film for the first time, plot and character digressions from the book that disturbed several critics are missing the point. Here are conclusions that do make sense to me, from a review by Tomris Laffly writing in Roger Ebert : "The Secret Garden", as it always has, aims to open a gate for kids, a passage to a rejuvenating place that both validates and soothes adolescent fears too scary to handle unaccompanied. This essential version does exactly that when big minds trapped in little bodies might need it the most."
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Niroz Is Remarkable
Niroz is a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl who lives with her surviving family members in Domeez refugee camp in Kurdistan. Niroz appears in this 5 minute UNICEF video after one minute. She is unvanquished, articulate, very intelligent, and engaging. She likes her friends, school, and playing chess. Her dream is to become a cardiac surgeon. She is your guide to life in the camp. She is quite wonderful. This is an exceptional video.
Here is the YouTube video Link: Niroz
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Compassion
“We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.”
Albert Schweitzer,The Philosophy of Civilization, Quoted in Real Cool Dogs
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Ariel Wulff Update
Ariel Wulff is a dog enthusiast, dog owner and advocate, artist, and author of several dog books. She has also been illustrating a variety of delightful children's books for Tamira Ci Thayne, founder of Who Chains You Publishing. Here are excerpts from Wulff's blog, Up On The Woof, with information about this humane endeavor:
Tamira Ci Thane is the founder and former CEO of the humane organization Dogs Deserve Better. . . When she left DDB, Tami founded Who Chains You Publishing in order to publish books for and about animal lovers, activists and rescuers—in all genres from children’s to fiction to autobiographies. The mission of Who Chains You is to amplify the voices of the animals through the empowerment of animal lovers, activists, and rescuers who write books elevating the status of animals in society . . . At the deepest level, WCY books explore which chains humans must break within ourselves in order to free the animals. Here is a link to: Who Chains You Publishing Cover by Ariel Wulff.
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Fences for Fido - Unchained - One Dog at a Time - All Volunteer
"Fences for Fido is an award-winning, non-profit organization that builds donor-funded fences free of charge for families who keep their dogs on chains, tethers and in small enclosures. We also provide: A warm, insulated dog house; Spay/neuter services; Critical vet care."
During Corona Virus, a modified Fences for Fido carries on their work.
"We were able to work with all of our Client Outreach team members to list our highest-need cases. Using the smallest possible crew with safety measures in place, we were able to visit those dogs and: Set up temporary panel fences if needed; Schedule urgent veterinary care as needed; Deliver dog houses or food as needed.
AND MOST OF ALL, We're protecting OUR VOLUNTEERS: the most valuable part of this amazing, life-saving, kindness-spreading, hard-working machine we've created together.
Here is a link to a terrific video montage of Joyous Dogs after a visit from Fences for Fido.
The photo is of Fences For Fido Central Oregon Volunteers, taken before the Corona Virus.
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Planet of the Dogs Book Series
"Our story begins long, long ago, before there were dogs on Planet Earth.
There was plenty of space in those days for people to settle and grow things. . .There were clear lakes and cool streams with lots of fish. There were fields and woods with game to hunt. . . Many people settled in these places of abundance and prospered. . .
And then there came a time when the abundance and happiness found on Planet Earth were threatened by people like the warrior tribes of Stone City. They had forgotten how to love. . .Their numbers began to grow and soon they were taking the homes, land, and farms where peaceful people lived. . . Something had to be done -- but what could anybody do? No one knew it at that time, but help would come from far, far away, from the Planet of the Dogs."
We have free reader copies of all the books in the Planet Of The Dogs series for therapy dog organizations, individual therapy dog owners, librarians, teachers and independent bookstores. Email us with a postal address to [email protected] and we will send you the books.
To read sample chapters of any book in the series, visit PlanetOfTheDogs
The Planet Of The Dogs series, including Castle In The Mist and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, is available from many Internet sources and through independent bookstores of all sizes.
The illustration of the Black Hawk Castle is by Stella Mustanoja McCarty.
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Dogs
“Their lives are balancing acts between a humanized being and an older, wilder nature. Dogs are interstitial beings, not yet human, but no longer wolves. That is the unresolved paradox of doghood.” Leena Krohn
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