"The Secret World of Arrietty" Is A Hit

It's official: Studio Ghibli's new film The Secret World of Arrietty is a much loved hit. It's getting rave reviews from all over* with many repeats of the words "wonder" and "enchanting".

Here's a trailer:

My son (5) is completely hooked by the previews he's seen and is asking for stories about little people so, thankfully, I have plenty of fairy tales to fuel his imagination while he waits to see it.

So far my list includes Thumbelina, Tom Thumb, Thumbling and Hop o' my Thumb and I'm throwing in some Gulliver's Travels for good measure along with a few Katharine Briggs collected folklore stories on fairies and other wee folk found at the bottom of the garden. According to my son, it appears, from all the mischief happening, we have wee folk INSIDE the house too... ;)

But we're not limiting stories to "people who are teensy" but also looking at heroes who have to deal with things waaay bigger than they're used to. Jack and the Beanstalk is getting lots of repeats thanks to Jack's encounters with a giant and his wife. What other stories would you tell to kids enamored by the idea of The Borrowers?

I don't know if we'll be able to get to the theater to see it, but I prefer to watch Studio Ghibli movies in Japanese anyway and read the subtitles. The first time we saw Ponyo we had a screener in Japanese with no subtitles and just loved it. We really didn't miss any of the story at all. The animation told us everything we really needed to know. We've since seen the English dub and the subtitled Japanese and we still prefer watching it in Japanese. I'm guessing Arrietty will be the same. In the meantime we may be able to pick up some of the beautiful books that are coming out. The "Art Of" book looks stunning, of course, but there's a graphic novel/film comic (vol 1 of 4 shown above) which promises good nights of family story time ahead too. Looking forward to it!

* Yes, lots of rave reviews, except for one that accuses it of Left-Wing propaganda. As someone who comes from a background in which fairies may very well have been at the bottom of the garden and were known for many generations to cause their own brand of mischief I have to wonder what happened to these people's bed time story time. Did they miss it? I feel sorry for them.