Breaking News: Blue Sky Studios & Fox Animation to Adapt Garth Nix's "Frogkisser!"

Frogkisser! is not even released yet (due out in February 2017 by Scholastic in the US and in Spring via Picadilly Press in the UK) but has already gotten a lot of interest. So much so that it's been snapped up for a live action-animation hybrid movie by Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Rio, Epic, The Peanuts Movie).

Here's Nix's excited tweet:

Garth Nix: “FROGKISSER! is one of those novels that just bubble out of the imagination and demand to be written all at once and won’t permit anything else to get in the way. I am delighted that my various publishers have all responded to the book with as much exuberance as I felt while I was writing it.”

And i's a musical!

Fox Animation recently announced an initiative to expand what it calls "family hybrid" movies and the Australian author's book is first cap off the rank. Apart from great news for Nix and fairy tale fans, this clues us into a interesting direction for future movies coming from Fox and Blue Sky - a musical family hybrid - aka live action and animation fantasy family-friendly movie! We really are going back to the trends of the 80's and 90's in a good way. (Disney will be taking notice, you can be certain.)

It is indeed a "princess kissing frogs" story but with a wonderful Garth Nix twist. Here's the blurb:

The Last Thing She Needs Is a Prince. 

The First Thing She Needs Is Some Magic.  

Poor Princess Anya. Forced to live with her evil stepmother's new husband, her evil stepstepfather. Plagued with an unfortunate ability to break curses with a magic-assisted kiss. And forced to go on the run when her stepstepfather decides to make the kingdom entirely his own. 

Aided by a loyal talking dog, a boy thief trapped in the body of a newt, and some extraordinarily mischievous wizards, Anya sets off on a Quest that, if she plays it right, will ultimately free her land-and teach her a thing or two about the use of power, the effectiveness of a well-placed pucker, and the finding of friends in places both high and low. 

With Frogkisser!, acclaimed bestselling author Garth Nix has conjured a fantastical tale for all ages, full of laughs and danger, surprises and delights, and an immense population of frogs. It's 50% fairy tale, 50% fantasy, and 100% pure enjoyment from start to finish. 

Fox seems pretty happy about it. They even seemed to have gotten a jump on the marketing. Appearing on Ralph Millero's Instagram today (Millero is 20th Century Fox Vice President in charge of The Peanuts Movie), with the caption "How many frogs have you kissed?":

Shaun Tan's "The Singing Bones" Is Coming!

If you've been following the blog for a while, you will know I am in awe of Australian artist Shaun Tan's work and one of his most recent artistic forays delved deep into the world of Grimm's fairy tales, producing beautiful and simple* sculptures for the new Phillip Pullman's translation of Household Tales - but only for the German edition. I bit the bullet and ordered a German copy to refer to while reading the English version I already had. It was money well spent!

I put a rather detailed and image-filled post about the book HERE and another HERE.
          
I was delighted at the time, to learn that Tan became so enamored of the tales that he continued creating 'tale sculptures' long after the Pullman book was finished.

And now, soon, we will be able to have them all together in a book! (Squee! #sorry #couldntbehelped)

It's due to be released in October in Australia and I have yet to find concrete details of overseas releases. Here is the official description:

The Singing Bones: Inspired by Grimms' Fairy Tales by Shaun Tan 

"Hauntingly beautiful visual vignettes in paper and clay."

In this beautifully presented volume, the essence of seventy-five fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm is wonderfully evoked by Shaun Tan's extraordinary sculptures. Nameless princes, wicked stepsisters, greedy kings, honourable peasants and ruthless witches, tales of love, betrayal, adventure and magical transformation: all inspiration for this stunning gallery of sculptural works.

Introduced by Grimm Tales author Philip Pullman and leading fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes, The Singing Bones breathes new life into some of the world's most beloved fairy tales.'These little figures of clay, with their simplified features, their single attributes, are perfect realisations of the strangeness of the characters they represent.' - Philip Pullman

                     
Don't you love that little fox? It's a musical instrument! Like an ocarina, and meant, I'm sure, to reflect music being played on the bones of one of the characters in the tale "The Singing Bone". (I love that tale and it's related sister fairy tale ballad "The Twa Sisters"!)

I have to admit I went through a phase quite a few years ago (counting back it was perhaps fifteen or more years ago now!) in which I was tired of seeing versions of the Grimm's tales and various illustrations, even when it was the lesser known ones. On the plus side it sent me searching far beyond the range of tales I knew and into a bumbling use of translator programs (and, when I was lucky, people) to search non-English web sites to help me find different tales and discussions, and I was never bored. What I didn't expect though, was to find out more about how the Germans viewed these national (often to them) tales and, in context, about the life and work of the Grimms and the many people they worked with too. I came across a whole different range of artists, both East and West, who had fresh new takes on the Grimm's tales and it quickly revived my love of the Household Tales collection. The more I saw and learned, the more I realized the tales could function as a branching out point to discover many new and wonderful fairy tales, as well as be a touchstone for context while researching.
                            
In recent years I've felt almost spoiled with how much has come to light (and been published) with regard to the Grimm's process, collecting, editing and writing. When the internet took a giant leap into the visual communication age, including using memes and uploading images from obscure texts and out-of-print books being shared on the web, I suddenly felt I was collecting pieces of a story that wasn't so distant and isolated from my contemporary experience, but ongoing and still affecting the world today.** Almost*** every major tale collection around the world and through history either was influenced by the work of the Brothers Grimm or they themselves were influenced by it. The threads, though sometimes thin, are stronger than I first realized and I've found I can no longer be blasé about the Grimms' tales and work.

To top that, just in the last year or so, we've had Philip Pullman's fresh translation of the popular edition of Household Tales, Jack Zipe's wonderful translation of the Grimm's First Edition (with Andrea Dezso's gorgeous silhouettes, which you can see a post on HERE) and Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl historical novel, which, though fiction, helps stitch together a lot of context and provides yet another fresh look at the tales themselves, both in a societal context and in a personal one (there will be more on this book very soon!).

Tan's sculptures are so very different from much of the work that's ever been done to represent and illustrate the Grimm's tales. In my linked posts, they details how uncomfortable Tan initially was in trying to illustrated the tales, and then he experimented with folk art-like sculpture. The interesting thing about simplicity is it's very hard to capture the essence of something so elegantly, yet despite being fairly new to the medium of clay and paper***, Tan has created a superb collection that clearly came out of the Grimm tales.


* Simple is so very difficult to do!
** In case you hadn't guessed, this was an inspiration to follow the threads of fairy tale news happening in our day-to-day, and ta-da! Once Upon A Blog.. daily fairy tale news was born.
*** While this isn't true of every collection available, it's astonishing to see how many have at least a thread connecting them to the Grimm's work in some way - either back in time or forward in influencing them.
**** Tan also used string, wax, shoe polish, sand, paint, wire, anything that would support his sculpture. His Hansel & Gretel piece even has cake decorations.

Aussies 'n' Fairy Tales Week: Shaun Tan, Artist and Alchemist

From the foreword - it's the Brothers Grimm themselves, being told stories by a fox

Shaun Tan, author and illustrator extraordinaire and winner of many, many awards, including:

• Three time winner of Best Artist for the World Fantasy Award

• Best Professional Artist Hugo Award (2011) and multiple award nominee

• Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award or ALMA (2010)

• Academy Award (aka Oscar Award Winner) for The Lost Thing, Best Short Film (animated)

It's very likely you know of him or know his work, especially if you follow children's literature, fantasy or animation (he also worked as a concept artist for Pixar's "WALL-E").

While Mr. Tan's illustrations have always had that uniquely Australian slightly off-kilter sense of fantasy underlying the mundane, and has always seemed to seamlessly weave the fantastic or 'other' into his largely suburban illustrations, it's only fairly recently that he created works specifically based on fairy tales. It turned out that he found this more challenging than he initially believed but, boy did it pay off!

Thousandfurs

Note: His Thousandfurs sculpture (shown above) was also a Spectrum 21, Dimensional Art Nominee/Finalist for 2014, which were held in May (they are 'the' coveted International Award for Contemporary Fantastic Art).

The Three Little Men in the Wood (Die drei Männlein im Walde)

As I've seen this quoted elsewhere in entirety, I'm including the whole of Mr. Tan's statement about the project here, as it will be of special interest to fairy tale folk, and those artists working to "illustrate" fairy tales (in whatever manner and media):

In 2012 I was approached by my German editor Klaus Humann of Aladin Verlag in Hamburg to consider a cover illustration, as well as perhaps some some internal drawings for a new edition of the Grimm Brothers collected folk tales written by Philip Pullman (the well known author of the His Dark Materials trilogy). I thought about this for some time, as I've always wanted to do something Grimm related but didn't have an ideal approach (or much time for commissions). Philip had chosen a selection of 50 favourite fairy tales, and written them with a thoughtful clarity that will appeal to modern readers yet keeping true to their original spirit. I was particularly interested in the scholarly notes at the end of each tale, offering background, critique and even a few suggested improvements from a writer's point of view; I was also interested in Philip's introduction which praises the concise, 'cardboard character' narrative of Grimm's fairy tales and points out they do not necessarily benefit much from illustration. A good problem for a visual artist! And one I'm inclined to agree with: I'd long ago researched fairy tales as a possible illustration project, but soon gave it up as the tales had such an abstracted quality about them, I couldn't think of a suitable 'way in' as an artist who favours representational imagery. While I love such illustrations as those byArthur Rackham, I've always felt they conflict with my own less literal experience a reader. And in many cases, the tales are just too strange or irrational for conventional 'scenes'. 

The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich
(Der Froschkönig oder
der eiserne Heinrich)

So I was a little reluctant at first, but soon began to think of ways I could avoid painting or drawing altogether. As a child, I was actually more obsessed with sculpture than painting and drawing, working with clay, papier mache and soapstone, and was reminded of this when browsing through my collection of books on folk art and particularly Inuit scultpure and Pre-Columbian figurines from Mexico. Many of these small, hand-sized sculptures are strongly narrative and dreamlike, and offered a 'way in' to thinking about Grimm's stories as part of an old creative tradition. The works I ended up creating hopefully convey the spirit of each tale without actually illustrating them, like anonymous artifacts in a museum open to all kinds of interpretation.

Though Philip Pullman's Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm was published in the UK and US, each with a nice cover, it's the German edition that is the most wonderful, thanks to the inclusion of illustrations by the, incredibly adaptable, Shaun Tan.  Mr. Tan created some fifty sculptures representing Pullma's chosen fifty tales, which are photographed beautifully and are displayed in the edition throughout. While there are no plans at present, to translate it into English, (I don't understand why myself, as the edition with Shaun Tan's sculptures would be my first choice), one of the wonderful things is that Mr. Tan hasn't stopped there. He continues to be inspired by the tales and is in the process of enlarging the collection of fifty sculptures to at least 60.

Here is a very recent one, from Shaun Tan's blog, with his note:

"One of several new sculptures inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales, this one for a the story 'The Blue Light' (Das blaue Licht), about a solider taking revenge against those who have wronged him (including the witch above). I began this series as a set of illustrations for the German edition of Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales published last year, and have since continued to create additional works for other stories that I found particularly intriguing outside of that collection. By 1850, the Grimm Brothers included over 200 tales in Children's and Household Tales, so there's certainly no shortage of inspiration; as Margaret Atwood notes, 'no emotion is unrepresented'." (Shaun Tan)

          

Little Red Cap (Rotkäppchen)

         

Godfather Death (Der Gevatter Tod)

I find it interesting that, in a discussion with Neil Gaiman, Shaun Tan says the way he uses words is, he believes, not just his style but also a cultural thing:

Gaiman: Your stuff is always laconic. One of the things I love about it is that a picture is worth a thousand words and you make your pictures work very hard. 

Tan: Part of it is that I don't trust myself as a writer. I still lack confidence, probably because the first 20 or so stories I wrote were roundly rejected. I actually started out as a writer and then converted to illustration because I realised that there was a dearth of good illustrators in genre fiction, at least in Australia at that time. I diverted all of my resources to visual imagery, and as a result I noticed that my writing did become more and more pared down, until it started to approximate my normal speaking patterns. When I write a story I imagine I'm telling it to someone like my brother. And we don't talk that much [laughs] – it condenses everything down and that's a very Australian thing, too.

And that trait might just explain why Australians on the whole seem to be so drawn to fairy and folktales and enjoy working with them.

The Nixie of the Mill-Pond (Die Nixe im Teich)

There is a wealth of information on Shaun Tan's work all over the internet, from his website to interviews to articles and awards, so I won't repeat much more here. I will only say that I am so glad Mr. Tan found illustrating fairy tales to be such "trouble" and found his own way around it. The sculptures are unique and beautiful and, now that they exist, it seems odd they didn't before.

           

The Stolen Farthings (Der gestohlene Heller)

A Riddling Tale (Rätselmärchen)

The Twelve Brothers (Die zwölf Brüder)

I can't wait to see what tales he tackles next in his Grimm sculptures and hope to see the collection together on day as well.

Iron John (Eisenhans) - (Not to be confused with The Frog King or Iron Henry)

(You can see many more of the sculptures from the German edition HERE in a previous post of mine and from a related one over the the SurLaLune blog HERE with an additional write about the book.)

Rumpelstiltskin (Rumpelstilzchen)

In the meantime, he is back to being very busy as author and illustrator and already gathering awards for his latest offering, Rules of Summer, about two brothers, living in a world of fantastic creatures and crazy gizmos, in which one breaks all the rules and the other does his best to stop him doing so... or save him. At home in Australia, this last month, Shaun Tan won both the Ditmar and the Chronos National Awards for Best Artwork for Rules of Summer, and just this past week he also won the 2014 Illustration Prize for Children's and Youth books from the German Gemeinschaftswerk der Evangelischen Publizistik (GEP), another prestigious illustrators award, also for Rules of Summer.

These 3 sculptures were sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2013 (sob!)

Here is a brief list of popular works as author and illustrator (or illustrator only, where indicated):

• Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (2008 - interior illustrations)
• The Lost Thing (2000)
• The Arrival (2006) (Which has also been made into an amazing piece of folktale-like theater - see pics below)
• Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008)
• Grimm's Marchen (German edition only) by Philip Pullman (2013 - illustrations/sculptures)
• Rules of Summer (2013)

Shaun Tan's website can be found HERE.
He blogs HERE, usually with works-in-progress or pieces that likely won't be published elsewhere, as well as occasional news.

Aussies 'n' Fairy Tales Week: Juliet Marillier, Daughter of Tales, Writer of Legends

Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier - Full cover illustration for Tor UK by Jon Sullivan

Here's a multi-award winning, epic historical fantasy novelist and fairy tale writer whom you will likely be familiar with: Juliet Marillier.

If you haven't read any books by Ms. Marillier, you're in for a treat. "Epic" is an excellent description of the stories she writes (many are, or become, series) and it's clear she does a lot of historical research into time, place, legend and related tales as she's creating her worlds. She cites traditional fairy tales and folklore as being among her biggest influences, and that she continues to read them all to this day. It's no surprise, then, to find folk motifs woven throughout her books, or to discover that she's written some wonderful stories inspired by specific tales (retellings is probably not quite the correct term).

The AFTS spoke to Ms. Marillier recently, asking her just what it was about fairy tales that attracted her. Here's an excerpt:

* Many fairy tales weave through your books and short stories. Daughter of the Forest is based on ‘The Six Swans’ and Wildwood Dancing on ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’. What is it about fairy tales that attracts you? 

Juliet Marillier & furry family

I’ve loved fairy tales since I was a small child. Back then, it was the sense of wonder, the huge possibilities opened up by the idea that a magical realm exists alongside, or maybe inside, the world we know; and it was the thought that each of us can be a hero and achieve the apparently impossible. It’s often the gormless youngest brother or the quiet youngest sister who ends up saving the day – a person thought unimportant by his or her family and community. For a shy, bookish child, that was a reassuring message for the future! 

Over the years I’ve continued to read fairy tales, folklore and mythology and to read scholarly discussions of them, and the magic has never died for me. Fairy tales are powerful. They make sense of real life dilemmas. They give people codes for living wisely and well, and they provide hope and reassurance in times of fear and doubt. When I use fairy tale material I do so with immense respect for all the storytellers who have come before me, each of them reworking the story to suit his or her circumstances.

You can read the whole interview on the AFTS website HERE.

Since there's a very good chance she's already on your radar, I'll just list the books that are most distinctly linked to a tale (or tales) with a little added information.

Daughter of the Forest
Based on the fairy tale The Six Swans, it remains one of my favorite retellings of all books to date. A series of five more books followed to expand the story.

From Ms. Marillier's website:

In Daughter of the Forest, the fairy tale story - a youngest sister must maintain complete silence while weaving shirts from nettles in order to return her swan brothers to human form - is combined with a family drama set on both sides of the Irish Sea. More than anything, this is a story about the bond of love between siblings. 

The framework for Daughter of the Forest is a Germanic tale, The Six Swans, from the collection of the Grimm brothers. Beneath the classic fairytale elements (a wicked stepmother, a transformation, a trial by silence) is a story of courage born from loss, and lives forever altered. With its swan imagery and its remote forest setting, the Germanic story settles easily into the Irish landscape and may indeed even owe something to the Celtic tradition, a major influence on European folktales from the thirteenth century onwards. The Children of Lir, the tale of Aengus Og and his swan-bride, these are Irish myths in which child turns to swan and swan to beautiful maiden, in the space of an eye blink.

Wildwood Dancing
Using the fairy tale of The Twelve Dancing Princesses (& referencing another...).

Description:

There are many mysteries within the wildwood. Jena and her sisters share the biggest of all, a fantastic secret that enables them to escape the confines of their everyday life in rural Transylvania. They have kept it hidden for nine long years. 

When their father falls ill and must leave their forest home over the winter, Jena and her oldest sister Tati are left in charge. All goes well until a tragic accident allows their over bearing cousin Cezar to take control. The appearance of a mysterious young man in a black coat divides sister from sister, and suddenly Jena finds herself fighting to save all she holds dear. With her constant companion Gogu by her side, she must venture to realms dark and perilous in her quest to preserve, not just those she loves, but her own independence as well.

And a bonus question from the Writer Unboxed mini-interview on the book:

Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?JM: It combines fairytale fantasy, history, family drama and love story. The Transylvanian setting allowed me to explore some of the darker aspects of the Otherworld, but I’ve tried to avoid vampire cliché. The relationship between Jena and Gogu is central to the book. I’m always puzzled by those Frog Prince stories in which the girl is so thrilled when the frog morphs into a handsome prince. I mean, would you fall instantly in love with someone who had just … appeared? So I wrote a story in which the strongest bond of love is between girl and frog.

Heart's Blood
Inspired by the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.

Author's Note:

Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favourite fairy tales, and readers will recognise the bones of it in Heart’s Blood: a mysterious house with an alienated, disfigured master, a priceless plant growing in a forbidden garden, magic mirrors and unusual household retainers. The story of my novel has the same general shape as that of Beauty and the Beast. 

However, this is far from a fairy tale retelling. It’s not even a close reinterpretation of the traditional tale. Heart’s Blood is a love story, a ghost story, a family saga, a story about people overcoming their difficulties, and a little slice of Irish history, as well as a homage to a favourite fairy tale. 

Prickle Moon
Ms. Marillier's short story and novella collection.

Review:

"She sang them in, verse by verse, name by sweet name ..." So begins Prickle Moon, Juliet Marillier’s first collection of short stories, and what stories they are. Each tale, whether inflected by fantasy, horror or science fiction, is powerful. Each bears the bones of its fairytale ancestors, inviting you to sit by the fire and hear stories at once timeless and ancient, yet shot through with the silver veins of modern life. Entertaining and enchanting, lyrical and lovely, Marillier will sing you in, too. (British Fantasy Award winner Angela Slatter)

AND COMING SOON:

Dreamer's Pool (Blackthorn and Grim Book 1)
Set in medieval Ireland, this book contains both fairy tale and mystery elements. Release date is set for October 2014 for Pan Macmillan in Australia, and November 2014 for Penguin's US edition.

Description introduction:

What if you were locked up awaiting execution and a stranger offered you a bargain that would set you free?  What if accepting bound you to certain rules of behaviour for seven years, rules you knew you were likely to break within days? And what if the penalty for breaking them was to find yourself back where you started, eaten up with bitterness and waiting to die?

Blackthorn chooses life, even though she must promise not to seek vengeance against her arch-enemy, Lord Mathuin. In company with a cell-mate, the hulking, silent Grim, the one-time healer and wise woman flees north to Winterfalls in Dalriada, where she settles in a derelict cottage on the fringe of the mysterious Dreamer’s Wood.  Blackthorn has promised her benefactor, the fey nobleman Conmael, that she will use her gifts only for good. But she and Grim are both scarred by the past, and the embittered healer finds her promise increasingly hard to keep. 

Read the first chapter excerpt HERE.

Other books by epic fantasy books (all with folktale motifs!) by Juliet Marillier:

   

You can find Ms. Marillier's website HERE
Her Facebook page is HERE
And she's a regular columnist on Writer Unboxed HERE.