Thoughts from a tree

Posts tagged ‘fairy tales’

Fairy Tale Fridays – Re-discovered Fairy Tales

Wow, I didn’t realize it had been a year since the last time I did one of these. I’m such a slacker 😦

This is a short one too, but I wanted to share this link before I forget: Newly re-discovered fairy tales

I’m always excited about new fairy tales. While the ‘classics’ are great, it’s important to remember that they cover a somewhat small spectrum of the world, and were compiled by people with an agenda. One of the fascinating things the article discusses is how the new collection makes obvious the gender-bias and white-washing done by the Grimms in their collection.

However, what I’d really like to start seeing more of is non-European fairy tales. And I’d like to see a Disney Princess moved based off one of them. One of my biggest disappointments with the Disney Princess movies has been their treatment of non-white characters. Why is it that every non-white character has to have a historically-based story line, instead of a fairy tale?

When they decided to do a black princess, for instance, why not celebrate a folk tale from Africa? They could have even just followed the book closer (I mean “The Princess And The Frog” by E.D. Baker, not “The Frog Prince” fairy tale), and it would have been a fairy tale type of story.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love all these movies, and I’m glad they at least *tried*. I just feel like they could have done even better. Studio Ghibli has several great examples of fairy tale stories that aren’t European, and they’re awesome! Wouldn’t it be great to see something like Princess Mononoke based on Native American mythology? How about a heroine that has to deal with Anansi?

Every culture has their own type of fairy tales, even if they don’t necessarily have “fairies” in them.  Stories of myth and magic. Stories originally composed to teach morals or lessons. Legends. Folk tales. I want all of these stories to be shared and remembered.

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Fairy Tale Fridays

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Fairy Tale Fridays – Intro

I’ve struggled with what to write about on my blog. Although there are many things I’ve considered, when it comes down to sitting down and typing up a post, they rarely seem worth it. At one of the panels at the Florida Writer’s Conference I attended, a discussion about blogging occurred (it was not the main intended topic of the panel) and someone made a comment that struck me. I wish I could remember the exact words, or who said it, but it boiled down to this: write about the things you like, rather than the things you don’t, and try to make it something that relates to your book(s) in some way.

Some examples included things like, if you write books for middle-grade boys, you could talk about fun activities to do with your son(s) (since it’s usually going to be the parents reading the blog/buying the books, rather than the child). If you have a main character that likes to rock-climb on occasion, you could talk about rock-climbing.

I had an epiphany. I *love* fairy tales, and their relatives of mythology and legend. Most of my stories are at least tangentially based on a fairy tale, and are meant for that particular vein of fantasy. As soon as I made that connection, the theme presented itself “Fairy Tale Fridays.”

So that’s what I’ll do. I don’t promise to update *every* Friday, but I think I will be more successful than I have been in the past. Sometimes I will just discuss a particular fairy tale, the cliff-notes if you will, and its current adaptions. Other times I might talk about a mythological creature, or a particular adaptation of a fairy tale.

Disney is bound to get mentioned a lot, since not only do most other people know the movies, but also because I really like them (that’s a large part of the reason I work there, after all).

So that’s my plan, we’ll see how it goes.

Starting … now 🙂

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Fairy Tale Fridays, Writing

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