Author Appreciation Week: Fairy Grandfathers
Last week on twitter, Heidi (author of up-coming novel Sea, 2010) had a terrific idea! She thought that this week we should all pay tribute to the authors that have inspired us to greatness. Anyone can play. All you have to do is post and link your posts on twitter with #AAW and @HeidiRKling. Mon-Fri you can post one or two authors a day.
All of the "classic" Disney movies, and many of the recent films (The Princess and the Frog 2009, Rapunzel 2010), wouldn't have ever been made without these men. One of them wrote original short stories and two of them collected stories from all over their homelands (the country not being formed until 1871), and they wrote them down in a unifying language. They've been published in several languages, and children around the world have enjoyed these stories for over a hundred years.
Hans Christian Andersen & the Brothers Grimm
It's my opinion that any children's writer should read these two classic collections. A lot can be learned by studying the masters, in any medium. Both have such a rich history. I can't imagine growing up in a world without fairy tales. The Greeks had Aesop. I had not only Aesop but Hans, Wilhelm, and Jacob as well.
Being a first-born, my dad used to take me out for special movie nights. We usually saw the classic Disney movies. (This was before DVDs and the Disney Vault. Man, those were the days!) The first one I saw was Snow White, and while I don't remember my first impressions, my dad likes to tell the story that I was terrified of the witch. (In my defense, she's a pretty scary witch.) I fell in love, like every young girl does, with the idea that someday I could grow up to be a princess.
During my formative reading years, my mom used to bring us to the library and let us read pretty much anything. There were several book sales to make room for more books, and at one of these my mom bought a big yellow book. Inside were all the stories -- plus loads more -- that I recognized. They were all here: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc. One of these days I'm going to go searching for that book in my 'rents' basement. Photo to come if I can actually track it down.
As I grew up, more animated movies came out. I'd be a lier (that's Anne for liar) if I didn't admit that The Little Mermaid was my fav animated film. Close second is Don Bluth's Thumbelina. Without HCA, I'd be without both. It's exciting to think that these short stories inspired feature films & Saturday morning cartoons. They allowed all of us girls to sing the songs in school choir (well, if you were in choir). I remember my 7th grade classmates fighting over the solo in Part of Your World. Don't remember who got it, but that definitely means it wasn't me.
Then there was a little Broadway show called Into the Woods. Suddenly, the Baker and his wife were rubbing elbows with Cinderella. Jack was falling in love with Little Red Riding Hood. And the wolf? Oh, the wolf had a fully frontal introduction. Stephen Sondheim set the entire thing to a magical score and Bernadette Peters sang her heart out as that scary witch. The one who turned out to be not so much evil as misunderstood. Again, none of this would've been possible without the Brothers Grimm.
Through all of these permutations the stories taught me something else: once a short story is written, it's no longer yours. The world, the collective unconscious, whatever you want to call it takes it back, spins it around, and offers up something new again. But sometimes it's good to go back to the start. You can certainly do this with HCA, but you can't do it with the BG.
In the "original" version they submitted for Rapunzel, the witch went up and had to let out Rapunzel's clothes ... because she was pregnant. Even the censors had a little Disney-esque desire for a happy, and modest, ending. In their first version of Snow White it was her jealous mother leading her to the woods to kill her. The editors thought that was too scary for babes and made them change it to a step-mother and her hunter henchman. There are many theories that say Sleeping Beauty was not woken with a kiss, but due to something much more sinister. Many of the tales we've come to love have been lightened up from the versions known to the country folk of a hundred years ago (and longer).
Finally, I think that why I was so drawn to the printed versions (after the initial shock) was because of all that darkness. The Little Mermaid never gets to be with her prince. Gretel must kill a "witch" to escape. The Little Match Girl dies in a cold alleyway. Snow White's glass coffin belonged to an entirely different story. My own writing has a penchant for similar darkness. But I, like those who came before me, need a gentler editor's hand to show my audience the possibility of light in all that darkness.
All of the "classic" Disney movies, and many of the recent films (The Princess and the Frog 2009, Rapunzel 2010), wouldn't have ever been made without these men. One of them wrote original short stories and two of them collected stories from all over their homelands (the country not being formed until 1871), and they wrote them down in a unifying language. They've been published in several languages, and children around the world have enjoyed these stories for over a hundred years.
Hans Christian Andersen & the Brothers Grimm
It's my opinion that any children's writer should read these two classic collections. A lot can be learned by studying the masters, in any medium. Both have such a rich history. I can't imagine growing up in a world without fairy tales. The Greeks had Aesop. I had not only Aesop but Hans, Wilhelm, and Jacob as well.
Being a first-born, my dad used to take me out for special movie nights. We usually saw the classic Disney movies. (This was before DVDs and the Disney Vault. Man, those were the days!) The first one I saw was Snow White, and while I don't remember my first impressions, my dad likes to tell the story that I was terrified of the witch. (In my defense, she's a pretty scary witch.) I fell in love, like every young girl does, with the idea that someday I could grow up to be a princess.
During my formative reading years, my mom used to bring us to the library and let us read pretty much anything. There were several book sales to make room for more books, and at one of these my mom bought a big yellow book. Inside were all the stories -- plus loads more -- that I recognized. They were all here: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc. One of these days I'm going to go searching for that book in my 'rents' basement. Photo to come if I can actually track it down.
As I grew up, more animated movies came out. I'd be a lier (that's Anne for liar) if I didn't admit that The Little Mermaid was my fav animated film. Close second is Don Bluth's Thumbelina. Without HCA, I'd be without both. It's exciting to think that these short stories inspired feature films & Saturday morning cartoons. They allowed all of us girls to sing the songs in school choir (well, if you were in choir). I remember my 7th grade classmates fighting over the solo in Part of Your World. Don't remember who got it, but that definitely means it wasn't me.
Then there was a little Broadway show called Into the Woods. Suddenly, the Baker and his wife were rubbing elbows with Cinderella. Jack was falling in love with Little Red Riding Hood. And the wolf? Oh, the wolf had a fully frontal introduction. Stephen Sondheim set the entire thing to a magical score and Bernadette Peters sang her heart out as that scary witch. The one who turned out to be not so much evil as misunderstood. Again, none of this would've been possible without the Brothers Grimm.
Through all of these permutations the stories taught me something else: once a short story is written, it's no longer yours. The world, the collective unconscious, whatever you want to call it takes it back, spins it around, and offers up something new again. But sometimes it's good to go back to the start. You can certainly do this with HCA, but you can't do it with the BG.
In the "original" version they submitted for Rapunzel, the witch went up and had to let out Rapunzel's clothes ... because she was pregnant. Even the censors had a little Disney-esque desire for a happy, and modest, ending. In their first version of Snow White it was her jealous mother leading her to the woods to kill her. The editors thought that was too scary for babes and made them change it to a step-mother and her hunter henchman. There are many theories that say Sleeping Beauty was not woken with a kiss, but due to something much more sinister. Many of the tales we've come to love have been lightened up from the versions known to the country folk of a hundred years ago (and longer).
Finally, I think that why I was so drawn to the printed versions (after the initial shock) was because of all that darkness. The Little Mermaid never gets to be with her prince. Gretel must kill a "witch" to escape. The Little Match Girl dies in a cold alleyway. Snow White's glass coffin belonged to an entirely different story. My own writing has a penchant for similar darkness. But I, like those who came before me, need a gentler editor's hand to show my audience the possibility of light in all that darkness.