Showing posts with label tinder box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tinder box. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Happy New Year of the Dog!

Hans Tegner, from Fairy tales and stories, by Hans Christian Andersen, New York, 1900
(We know we have posted this before as a header, but it's probably our favorite illustration from this tale. We think it has quite the Gustav Doré feel about it.)
Now that kids are back to school and people have returned from their various 'vacationings' (and those who hold on to the Yuletide season until it's uconsidered seemly have finally given in to 'de-Christmas-sy-ing' their houses #guiltybutnotsorry), we are popping in to say:

May this New Year bring change for the better,
as well as joy, comfort, love, health and,
dare I say it, prosperity
(especially by way of friendly saucer-eyed dogs!)

There is a variant of the Tinderbox called The Soldier and the Candle, described as "The Aladdin of the Basque Country". (A condensed text can be found HERE, though you may need the help of Google translate to read it.) It's an interesting way to look at the tale and opens up the edges away from the politic-heavy subtext Andersen deliberately wove into his fairy tale. It would be interesting to see some retellings taking this slant for a spin on a storytellers wheel, especially with some new takes on the sleeping princess issue. (A hint to all fairy tale writers for the year!)

Some more images from this favorite tale filled with delightful, dish-eyed dogs below. All of these are by Hans Tegner as well.

All images above and below are by Hans Tegner,
from Fairy tales and stories, by Hans Christian Andersen, New York, 1900
A quick reminder that much fairy tale news is being tweeted - and retweeted - via our account over on Twitter HERE, along with other folks we have recommended, if you're needing a daily fix of fairy tales (and who isn't?).

A very Happy New Year 2018 to all our readers!

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Forest Rogers' "The Tinderbox"

The Tinderbox (tinted, finished) by Forest Rogers
Another lesser known fairy tale we adore, thanks to the amazing and awe-inspiring magical dogs with eyes of gigantic sizes, The Tinderbox (Hans Christian Andersen), has gotten some special treatment, care of one of our favorite sculptors, Forest Rogers.

She's been sharing her work-in-progress via her Facebook page, as well as her blog but just this month, finished it with a lovely tint method that complements it beautifully.

We admit some envy, along with congratulations of course, for the new owners. This might be our favorite piece of hers yet!


Forest Rogers at work
We're going to include an excerpt from Wikipedia here, on the sources and influences on Andersen when he wrote this literary fairy tale, because they're fascinating and we rarely hear about these other things. Not only that - it's interesting to see just how many fairy tale associations the story of Aladdin had, especially as the tale comes back into pop culture circles again, via the new season of Once Upon A Time.

Although we wish we had time to research these more for you and provide a fleshed out article, time is against us in the ticking past of so many fairy tale news stories. We hope this excerpt will inspire you to delve a little deeper yourself.

Enjoy:
"In-progress" although it looks stunning this way too.

Andersen based “The Tinderbox" on the Scandinavian folk tale "The Spirit in the Candle". In the folk tale, a soldier acquires a magic candle which has the power to summon an iron man to do his bidding. The soldier uses the candle to visit a princess, and summons the iron man to save his life when he is sent to the stake for doing so. In the preface to the second volume ofFairy Tales and Stories (1863), Andersen indicates he heard the tale as a child "in the spinning room, and during the harvesting of the hops."
Andersen knew The Arabian Nights, and "The Tinderbox” bears some similarities with "Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp". Both tales feature a supernatural being inveigling a mortal to enter an enchanted area on promise of rich reward; both tales feature three chambers filled with riches; both tales have heroes refusing to part with a magic luminant and then winning a princess through its use.
The story of Aladdin had a special emotional significance for Andersen. As a poor grammar school student in Copenhagen, he was invited to stay with a prominent Copenhagen family in the Amalienborg Palace. There, he was given a Danish translation of Shakespeare, and wrote in his diary on 12 December 1825:
"It's going for me as it did for Aladdin, who says at the close of the work as he stands at a window of the palace:Down there I walked when just a ladEach Sunday, if I was but allowedAnd gazed with wonder at the Sultan's palace.
Andersen was familiar with and widely read in folk and fairy lore. The princess locked in a tower in "The Tinderbox" has its counterpart in "Rapunzel"; the trail of flour mirrors the trail of grain in "Hansel and Gretel"; and the doors marked with chalk recall those from "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" – another tale from The Arabian Nights.

Monday, November 11, 2013

"Tinder" by Sally Gardner

It's a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinder Box! One of my favorite fairy tales!! And it was released this last week!!! *flails arms in excitement and corrects multiple typos before continuing*

I came across note of this rather randomly, and since I'm not focused on keeping up with books (there are so many wonderful things happening in fairy tale retelling land all the time, there could be daily news just on those), but it didn't take long to figure out I am more than happy to recommend it.

Here's the write up from Ms. Gardner's website:
Tinder is a truly modern fairytale, at once cruel yet deeply enchanting. Sally Gardner chose to set her tale in the Thirty Years War after meeting two young British soldiers who had just returned from modern warfare and were finding civilian life difficult to deal with. They had nightmares and agreed they had never felt more alive than when out at the front. If there is one fairy story that encompasses the trauma of war and its aftermath, it is The Tinderbox and Sally has exquisitely captured these dark overtones in a tale of great love and great loss, accompanied by stunning illustrations by renowned illustrator David Roberts. 
Tinder follows the adventures of Otto Hundebiss, a soldier tired of war who defies death. A mysterious half-man, half-beast nurses him back to health, but continues on alone, leaving Otto only with some old shoes and a set of dice which will tell him the way forward. Stealing chickens and bread in order to survive, Otto is followed by a strange grey-cloaked man who can transform into a wolf. Hiding from the werewolf up a tree, he meets the enigmatic Safire and the two travel together until they are tragically separated. 

From then, Otto’s mission becomes clear and he rolls the dice in hopes that they will lead him back to her. He is soon plunged into an adventure of dark magic and mystery, meeting the scheming Mistress Jabber and the terrifying Lady of the Nail. He learns the power of the Tinderbox and becomes the master of wolves, yet even these powers may not be enough to bring him what he desires.
Firstly, the writer, Sally Gardner is an award winning author from the UK (you may recognize her name from I, Coriander), so I wasn't too surprised when I found an extract, read it and thought - "yep, good stuff, want more!"

Here's a taste from Chapter 1:
Once in a time of war, when I was a soldier in the Imperial Army, I saw Death walking. He wore upon his skull a withered crown of white bone twisted with green hawthorn. His skeleton was shrouded with a tattered cloak of gold and in his wake stood the ghosts of my comrades newly plucked, half-lived, from life. Many I knew by name.  
You can read more of the extract - with illustrations - HERE.

Secondly, the book is also illustrated by David Roberts; someone who's name may not be too familiar but there's a good chance you've seen his work in various places. What I've seen of the drawings in Tinder look wonderful and fit the prose perfectly. I'm not entirely sure that I'll get to see my beloved triplet canine characters with eyes as big as saucers, plates and platters but the giant wolves I've caught glimpses of, placate me a somewhat on this point. ;)

With the book just released there is a "blog tour" happening, with Ms. Gardner giving interviews and various insights about the book around the web. You can read one of them HERE and find a list of interviews and dates there too.

Ms. Gardner also wrote an introduction to fairy tales and how dark they can be, for scifinow, some of which sheds light on her inspiration and process for writing Tinder:
A good fairy tale takes us into the dark, dark woods of our imagination. From there we can go as deep into the forest as we dare or stay on the edge, looking at the trees. A fairy tale talks to our souls in a way few other stories have the power to do. It holds the heartbeat of our fears. 
... Perhaps what a good fairy tale shows us more than anything is its versatility. It may be retold and rewritten and still we recognize its origins. The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen has always been one of my best beloved stories. He adapted a favourite childhood tale, The Spirit in the Candle, and added a dash of Aladdin. It is a wonderfully disjointed tale that travelled in the mind of its author who was twenty-nine years old before he wrote it down. 
Fairy tales should be frightening. Their nearest companions in literature are ghost stories. I love the dark retellings of Angela Carter, the fairy tales of Herman Hess, of the Italian writer Italo Calvino. 
It is not by chance that one of the greatest modern interpreters of fairy tales is Bruno Bettelheim for he was interned in a concentration camp where life is reduced to its barest bones. Fairy tales, under the cloak of a story, reveal the essentials of our lives. They project the trauma of adulthood onto young readers and show them a way of untangling its problems. 
“Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.”G K Chesterton


You can read the whole of her introduction (recommended!) HERE.

Note: on the page you'll find a poll, asking you which of the following is your favorite "dark fairy tale", of which The Tinderbox is one. The introduction for fairy tales by Ms. Gardner is below it.

It's funny. I never thought of The Tinderbox as being particularly dark. Perhaps because I always had this naive idea that the dogs would protect the princess should any form of harm be offered her along the way to the soldier - or by him. Clearly my impression of good dogs extended to magical ones in fairy tales.

But I'm curious: of the list given, which one would you say is your favorite dark tale?


Wednesday, December 21, 2011

David Petersen Illustrates Muppets & Fairy Tales

Don't you just love Miss Piggy as the Evil Queen? She could definitely take on Regina from OUAT!
I know the Muppet fairy tale comics have been out for a while but I thought the artwork by David Petersen, creator of the award-winning Mouse Guard graphic novels, was worth a revisit. Not only is he a phenomenal illustrator he's been back in "fairy tale news" with his latest project, illustrating some old fairy tale affiliates we recognize and tackling some lesser known tales too.

I am, of course, talking about the new Jim Henson's The Storyteller graphic novel anthology. (And yes, this is on my  fairy tale wishlist too - which, admittedly, is actually a lot longer than the one on Heidi's blog!) Mr. Petersen was the artist behind the lovely cover/promo-poster artwork and he also illustrates The Tinderbox in the anthology (another of my favorite stories!).

Here's an excerpt of what he says about this project, from his BLOG:
I was lucky enough to be asked by the folks at Archaia to do a pinup for their Jim Henson's The Storyteller Anthology Graphic Novel.(This also marks the 3rd Henson property I have been fortunate enough to have done pinup/cover/promotional artwork for Archaia!) The show did a wonderful job of transitioning between the Storyteller character and his dog and the story he was telling. The characters from the tale would appear in the reflections of water in bowls, on the sides of decorative steins, and in the painting over the hearth. I focused much of my attention to a way I thought I could capture that transition idea in a single pinup.
The story I started with was called The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen. The story starts with a soldier who, on the request of a old witch-like woman, climbs down the trunk of a hollow tree to a cavern where three giant dogs guarding piles of treasure dwelled, as well as a magic tinderbox capable of controlling the beasts. I only roughed-in these parts in my sketch and focused more on trying to get the linkess of John Hurt as the Storyteller and his Henson-furred dog. I scanned the sketches from my sketchbook and resized the elements (adjusting how close the Storyteller and his dog are sitting, where they sit in the frame, etc.) I also tinted the pencil work different colors to help me visualize what lines belong to which character or the window.
You can read more about his process and other projects HERE and below is the finished illustration of The Tinderbox that he shows some working steps for in his blog:
I'd love to see a panel with the Storyteller's dog meeting the three dogs with eyes like saucers. :D
I was so excited to pick up Jim Henson's The Storyteller book when it first came out. Although it doesn't approach the charm of the gorgeously puppeteered and animated TV series the collection is worth making a special spot on your bookshelf for. The comics, while having their own challenges in keeping the spirit of the series, once again pick up lesser known tales with a variety of illustrators and writers. While I'm picky about comics (I love the idea and much of the artwork but rarely find them truly readable) I can't wait to add this set (in hardcover if possible!) to my library when I can.

And, as promised, here are some of his beautiful cover pieces for the Muppet Fairy Tale comics:
I love Kermit as Peter Pan! It works really well.

I think this is from the King Arthur ones but it reminded me of Sleeping Beauty so I had to include it. :)
 
LOTS of info on the Muppet Snow White comic series HERE with behind-the-scenes insights on story and adapting the muppets to the characters and much more. You can also see additional illustrations for King Arthur and Robin Hood HERE and there's an additional illustration with Janice as Lady of the Lake HERE.

Since we're talking Muppets, as a completely silly segue I had to include a couple of the "Muppet Saga" posters recently released.
LOL! Now this is a version of Twilight I would like to see! :D

Friday, February 26, 2010

Happy National Tell A Fairy Tale Day!

February 26 is National Tell A Fairy Tale Day!
Yep - that's today in the US.

Officially:
This day celebrates Fairy Tales! On this day we are encouraged to have fun reading fairy tales and discussing fairy tale stories!
This is the first time I've heard of it too (if you look at the link you'll see it's a little hard to verify an official source except that a lot of people are celebrating it) but hey, sounds great to me!
There's a nice little article posted today by Hannah Boyd titled "Why Fairy Tales Matter" HERE.

So: if you could pass on ONE fairy tale ONLY to the next generation, which one would that be and why?

I know - impossible question. I have trouble answering that one too.

Let's try this one instead:
What one (or two) little-known fairy tale do enjoy?

I'll start:
"The Cat on the Dovrefell" also known as "The Trolls and the Pussycat"
Norwegian fairy tale collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe.
Trolls, a polar bear and a lot of humor. Love it! (Text HERE.)

"The Lame Fox" or "Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye"
Serbian fairy tale collected by A. H. Wratislaw (also in Andrew Lang's Grey Fairy Book)
A very patient (non-trickster) fox helps a boy win a golden horse, a golden tree and a golden girl. (Text HERE.)

And one more (because once you get me going it's hard to stop...):

"The Day Boy and the Night Girl"
by George MacDonald (one of my favorite fairy tale writers)
Opposites attract and help each other overcome their fears and the "witch with the wolf inside". (Text HERE.)
I also enjoy Jorinde & Joringel (Grimm's), The Tinder Box (H. C. Andersen - this is more popular than the others I've mentioned) and The Marsh King's Daughter (also by H.C. Andersen), which you probably know already if you've been reading this blog for a while. :)

Your turn.
Note: All images are of more familiar tales by the amazing Kinuko Y. Craft. SOURCE.