"The Wild Girl" (US Edition) Is Out! (And Coming to OUABlog!)

She's here, she's here!

I'm supposed to wait till it's Once Upon A Blog's turn on Kate Forsyth's virtual book tour through the US, to talk at length about this book, or to post our waiting-in-the-wings OUABlog team review (care of Christie Pang) but it felt weird not announcing on Tuesday that it's out NOW, because if you're remotely interested, you will not be disappointed and will wished you didn't wait to get your own copy.


I will admit to hunting down a UK edition (with silhouette artwork) over a year ago when I first heard about the book, knowing I'd at least like it (besides: silhouettes = pretty!). I was not prepared for how MUCH I would like it! The whole "tale behind the tales" (who told them to whom, how the tales were edited and changed [and possibly why], their layers and shades of meaning, how they fit into the cultural landscape of the Napoleonic war at the time etc) is a interesting source of speculation for any fairy tale enthusiast but you may not have considered it in quite the same, fascinating and immediate (and 'human') way as how Kate has told the story. The story of Dortchen Wild (who eventually became Dortchen Grimm - yes, wife of one of THE Brothers Grimm) is a story that makes you wonder why this tale isn't as well known as the fairy tales themselves.

Having read so many fairy tale novels I'm very picky with those I put in my "keep at arm's reach" fairy tale novel bookshelf but this one definitely qualifies, and I've already read  - and referred to - it multiple times.



There's more to come and Once Upon A Blog will have a special INTERVIEW with Kate Forsyth herself (with bonus special 'behind-the-scenes peek!) on this coming Monday - July 13th. (And you'll begin to have an idea of why I love this book so much.)

And there will also be a GIVEAWAY!

Stay tuned...

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.

"Erstwhile" Says Goodbye With "Mother Holle"

Would you believe Erstwhile, who have been bringing us wonderful comics of lesser known fairy tales, has been going for eight years? Sadly for us, the wonderful team of Gina, Elle and Louisa now feel it's time to bring this adventure to an end and to free themselves up for other things they've been wanting to do. While many of us sort of half-expected them to continue until all the tales were tackled, it should be acknowledged how much wonderful work in writing, designing and illustration these girls have done, consistently beautifully, over many years now. The web comic now unfolding twice a week, Mother Holle, is their final installation but well worth following, especially as it's the last chance we will have to do so - at least like this.

A note from the creators from their official website:

We are most honored to present to you our final story for the Erstwhile series, Mother Holle, by Gina Biggs. Yes, this story will indeed be our swan song, though it will be a song that carries on to the end of August and end with a Kickstarter for our third collected volume of fairy tales. 

Louisa, Elle, and myself have worked on Erstwhile for eight years now, though not all of those years was the series available online as a webcomic. In that time we have tackled twenty-four of our most favorite lesser-known fairy tales and we are quite proud of that work. 

We agree that it has been an amazing eight years together, but all feel that it is time to say goodbye. We want to move from this structure and possibly branch out with new comics, new fairy tale inspirations, and new adventures. We thank you so much for sharing in this love of fairy tales with us. We hope you will read to the end and in August grab the final hardcover volume of the collection. Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts! 

Now, please enjoy the comic!

There are a few pages out already and if you logged in while they were having glitch and server issues and were unable to see their pages, that's now been resolved. Although comments (which are always wonderful to read and a great discussion center) have been lost for those pages, they are once again showing in order and the new pages are stable.

If you haven't yet, you can purchase previous volumes of Erstwhile tales via HERE and, after Mother Holle is complete, they will be Kickstarting a campaign for the third and final volume of fairy tales as well. (All are/will be available in print and in e-copy form.)

This wonderful team have done amazing work in bringing lesser known tales back into circulation and we're so grateful for all their work. I can't wait to see what they plan to do next, especially with regard to fairy tales.

Note: The artwork shown within the post are the covers for the two volumes to date, which are still available to purchase. We'll keep you updated on the Kickstarter campaign for the third and final volume when it happens.

Tom Davenport's Pioneer Fairy Tale Films Now Available to Stream Free!

From the Brothers Grimm

Tom Davenport's Pioneer Fairy Tale Films

This is great news! I haven't had the chance to view all the films in the From the Brothers Grimm Davenport collection yet myself, as getting hold of copies has been challenging but I'm so glad Mr. Davenport has decided to share his films so freely so they can be much more widely viewed.

These aren't your average fairy tale films. They're set in a 'pioneer-era America', with a lot of Appalachian flavor, and are beautifully done. (They also show what filmmakers can do without a massive budget if you know what you're doing! I'd love to see what Tom & his wife Mimi could do with the current technology-on-the-go now available like smart phones and Go Pros!) 

I would also like to make special mention that, though the Davenports are kindly making these available for free viewing, please consider a small donation to help with the archive cost of these films so the originals can be preserved. (And it's a nice way to thank the Davenports too.)

Here's what the Davenports have announced:

We made a series of adaptations of folk/fairy tales in the 1980s and 1990s that were popular in schools and libraries. My wife Mimi and I set them in our local rural Virginia community near Delaplane. 

We have made streams and would like to share them freely with you. Donations will help us preserve these films in a climate controlled archive and allow us to connect with you - a gift much appreciated by this old filmmaker. 

Tom Davenport

 

Suggested donation is $2 for a single film. $10 for the whole series. But any amount will be gratefully received.

There are 11 films and I'm including the synopsis and the trailer for each as a teaser, but encourage you to go to his site, donate what you can and view the whole films there. There's also a bonus MGM Guide (Making Grimm Movies Guide)  for how to make low budget films series you can find HERE, and a teacher's guide to use with high school and college film students as well.

Ashpet (45 mins)

Set in the rural South in the early years of World War II, Ashpet is a version of Cinderella, the world's most popular folk tale.

Bearskin (20 mins)

In a contest with the devil, a Civil War soldier must not wash nor pray for seven years.

Bristlelip (20 mins)

A haughty princess gets her comeuppance in a version of Grimm's King Thrushbeard.

Frog King (15 mins)

A princess breaks her promise to a frog.

Goose Girl (18 mins)

An evil maid forces a princess to change places on their way to her wedding.

Hansel and Gretel (16 mins)

An Appalachian version of the classic story of the courage and loyalty of two children abandoned in the forest.

Jack & the Dentist's Daughter (40 mins)

In this comic variant of the Grimm's story, The Master Thief, a poor laborer's son wants to marry the dentist's daughter.

Mutzmag (50 mins)

With nothing more than her plucky spirit and her pocket knife, a mountain girl outwits a witch and an ogre to save herself and her sisters.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel (15 mins)

Rapunzel imprisoned in a tall wooden tower by a witch, allows a young man to climb her long brown hair to visit her.

Soldier Jack (40 mins)

Jack catches Death in a sack in this Appalachian tale.
Willa (85 mins)

An American version of 'Snow White' where Willa joins a traveling medicine show to escape her evil step-mother.

You can find links to the full films HERE. Enjoy your Summer viewing! And support a 'pioneer' filmmaker while you're at it.
Fairy Tale Bonus of the Day:

There is also a book available about the films and filmmaking process via amazon HERE. Recommended by Jack ZIpes and including a forward by him (which you can read HERE), this is one for the FT library folks!

From the Brothers Grimm: A Contemporary Retelling of American Folktales and Classic Stories

Description: Retells ten fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, placing them in the Appalachian Mountains and other American settings through the text and photographs from the Tom Davenport film versions."This collection will add a new dimension to any folktale section.  The ten tales have been Americanized and reset in Appalachia.  Imagine Cinderella as a poor, white Southern girl named Ashpet who is helped to romance by a wise black woman. Hansel and Gretel become children of a poor mountain family during the depression. Other stories include “Rapunzel, Rapunzel” and “Jack and the Dentist’s Daughter.” In its simplest form this book will be used with delight by speech students searching for a children’s story to read aloud. The book is also meant to spark interest in the video series that Davenport produced for PBS. B&W photos from the videos will encourage this. With or without the videos, language arts teachers will find many ways to use the tales. An accompanying teacher’s guide gives hints on using the book for kindergartners through senior high students, but it is also bound to be read just for fun. Recommended." (from The Book Report 1993)

In Memorium: Günter Grass

"Ich bin dabei gewesen" by Günter Grass (lithograph)

Günter Grass October 16, 1927 - April 13, 2015

Günter Grass, a Nobel Prize winning novelist who was fond of using fables and fairy tale motifs in his work, died this morning, aged 87.

He was Germany's best known post-war novelist and his most well known work is The Tin Drum. He's not the sort of author you can read lightly, despite his humorous turn of phrase and observations. His stories are difficult, layered, visceral and sometimes difficult to process.


Grass also wrote - and illustrated!* - a small novel based on the fairy tale The Fisherman and His Wife, titled The Flounder, or, in German, Der Butt. It's an eclectic work, certainly not for everyone and is the sort of novel you might recommend to someone, only to find they hate it, then be surprised that someone else you'd never think would read it, likes it as much as you do. (At the very least, it's good for discussions!) Here's the description:

It all begins in the Stone Age, when a talking fish is caught by a fisherman at the very spot where millennia later Grass's home town, Danzig, will arise. Like the fish, the fisherman is immortal, and down through the ages they move together. As Grass blends his ingredients into a powerful brew, he shows himself at the peak of his linguistic inventiveness.

Since the above doesn't really describe what the book is like, I'm going to post a brief but informative review I found on Goodreads by "Jos":

Deftig (ribald)! This would be the one-word review. Grass is explicit in his extensive descriptions - mostly of food, in parts sexuality or other body functions and sometimes violence. 
The story:Der Butt has three narrative dimensions. 1. Today, the narrator and his wife Ilsebill - who is of legendary fame due to an old fairy tale - are receiving a child. The book is divided into nine chapters, one for each month of the pregnancy.2. The second dimension consists of the narrator's multiple reincarnations through time, starting from neolithitic age. The focus is on his relationships, nine in the past plus two parallel to his current life.3. The third dimension is the tribunal (feminal) against the flounder who is accused of helping the male case, hurting womanhood through all ages. 

Grass uses these dimensions to tell the history of the area around his home town Danzig through time, to criticize nowadays (the 70's) society coined by the male dominance throughout history, to make a case for feminism while parallely dissembling the 70's women's movement and to celebrate the joys of a primary sensual life - natural food, uninhibited attitudes, simplicity. In parts, it's a book of its time, especially the 'politics' are outdated. At the same time the conflict of the sexes never gets old. The sensual pleasures he celebrates were as far away from the 70's as from today.
Grass certainly knows how to write. Some paragraphs are plain brillant. But he also doesn't know when enough is enough and he's fond of preaching. Still, an extraordinary book.

I also found this note in a fairly long tribute by The Guardian today:

His third and final memoir, Grimms’ Words: A Declaration of Love (2010), took the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm as the starting point for an exploration of the political and social side of his life, noting, for instance, how the figure of Tom Thumb lay behind that of Matzerath.

Gunter Grass self-portrait

From an older Guardian article on Grass' final memoir:

Growing up with the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, Grass said the pair went on to influence his own creative work: Tom Thumb "lives on" in Oskar Matzerath from The Tin Drum, and the brothers themselves play a role in many of his manuscripts. "In The Rat, for example, they are portrayed as a minister and a deputy minister who try to stop forests dying (from acid rain)," he said.

After my experience with The Tin Drum (amazing book but I couldn't get through it, it was so brutal, and the movie version - also amazing but I can never watch it again), I'm reluctant to pick up The Flounder, to read the rest of it (I've read the first few pages via a preview), even though it's a fairly short work in comparison (about 500 pages). Still, I am completely fascinated by the premise and how Grass came to write this in the first place. Clearly, he was the sort of writer we need, asking those difficult questions, examining life from different angles, finding different resonances in tales. He will be missed.

*27 difference drawings, some of which are in this post.

Thoughts On Word Trails & No Longer Seeing the Forests for the Trees

I saw a wonderful scene this week. Bear with me as I share it and hopefully I'll explain what I believe it has to do with fairy tales:

The scene was from the show The Americans*. While I'd be hard pressed to relate this show to fairy tales generally, it makes interesting observations about the human condition, love, despair and choices. The following scene is of the main male character, Philip, with his KGB handler, playing scrabble. Philip, at this point in his journey, is questioning the wisdom of orders given to him and his wife, feeling that it is compromising him as a basic human being - as a father and husband:

[Scene: Philip and his Handler playing scrabble.] 

H: Stuck between a geode and a hard place. (shuffles tiles) "Amatory" -(counts points)  24 yes, - 24 -loving , devoted,adoring. 

Philip: Where do you come up with this stuff? 

H: I love words. They leave a trail. For example, amatory is from the Latin word for 'love'. While wedlock - the condition of being married - is Norse, Norwegian: wed, lock. Which means perpetual battle. 

Philip: Your point being? 

H: Love and marriage in many ways are antithetical: one is a bolt of lightning, an epiphany, and the other is planting, tilling, tending. It's hard work. 

Philip: (glares at H) I'm trying to concentrate here. 

H: Oh sorry. 

Philip: (puts down scrabble letters)  

H: (reads) "sphinx" - excellent. 59 - bravo.**

Such a great exchange.

He's right. Words leave a trail.

At Myth & Moor yesterday (Terri Windling's wonderfully mythic and inspirational blog) Terri talked about the sense that our stories are disappearing, like many of the world's forests. She was quoting the book Tales Of Faerie and I have started discussing (From the Forest by Sara Maitland) and began by referencing a passage that caught my attention too - about the frustration parents have with the lack of response when they ask their children what happened in their day, ie. "Nothing." My reaction when reading this was so strong I went and grabbed a pencil, underlined it and bookmarked it to read to my husband later.

It finishes by explaining: "... but the 'nothing' is a cover for "I don't know how to tell a good story about it, how to impose a story shape on the events.' "

by Banksy (one of my favorites!)

Using words to tell stories is hard now. We're not only out of the habit, most people don't grow up with this; it's not as common a developmental skill as it used to be. For many, there just isn't time. At least, not to tell stories in that form. For others the gap between everyday expression and "word "smithing is just overwhelming and intimidating. Since oral stories (and general yarns and tale telling) have fallen out of everyday use, being able to tell tales is no longer a common-man thing to do. Whether or not it is true, to many it feels like telling stories are the territory of "true writers" only, so people just... don't. (Using myself as an example, Myth & Moor is full of beautiful, inspirational and thought provoking writing - I highly recommend it - and the comments on Terri's posts range from articulate to poetic - so much so, I often feel unable to comment, certain that I have nothing to add, even though I've always been made welcome there. And this is from someone who does write every day, adores words and has a rudimentary understanding of Latin and other base languages.) As a result, the people who understand those trails of history and stories within the words seem to be fewer and fewer every day. When it comes to tales, people not only get tongue-tied, the stories they stumbling-ly tell, lack vitality, the tales become muddied and, in some ways, they start to die.

The Grimms were motivated to write down fairy tales because they felt their language and tales were disappearing rapidly in the cultural clime. And they were right. Their work in stopping this from happening altogether is often underestimated but we owe them much.

Today we have the same sense, that stories and tales are disappearing, along with our language. Forget correct grammar, people don't even use full sentences anymore. (See? Just like that.) We resort to catch phrases, memes and emojis to communicate and express sentiments. We summarize in infographics. It's alarming in many ways but the lack of words doesn't mean language and stories are disappearing. It means they're changing shape.

In an age of the internet, in which we need to navigate the constant press of information overload, we've turned the bulk of the words off altogether and begun processing everything the fastest way possible - visually. And it works. After all, visuals are processed 60 000 times faster in the brain than text. We now live in a visual culture and there's no escaping it.

What tends to happen as a result though, is that WE DO LOSE STORIES through the gaps. And tales, and those word shapes with their trails. So what do we do?

"Knock Knock" by Hilary Leung

This is something I've been looking at seriously for a good couple of years now - the impact of visual communication and visual consumerism on storytelling. In many ways, this new form of language has opened up new forms of stories to people who weren't interested in telling tales before (for whatever reason). People who always responded with "Nothing" now fill their Tumblr accounts and Pinterest boards with fan-made images and quotes, blending ideas and sentiments, suggesting avenues of thought and inspiring conversation.

by Raquel Aparicio

"The hyper-visualisation age is now upon us, where any visual media object can act as a portal to other media." (source)

A truly interesting thing (and hidden treasure) is this: the best forms of these new "stories" (however fractured and incomplete they are) lead to words. And more words. The image shorthand is being used like a filtering system in an age of information overload. And the best, most useful "filter caught" images, usually use words too.

Sometimes trying to find what you want is like opening a Matroyshka doll - layers within layers within layers... and sometimes it seems more like hunting Koschei's soul which was hidden inside of a needle, inside of an egg, inside of a duck, inside of a hare, inside of an iron chest,buried under an oak tree, on a island, in the middle of the ocean... but ultimately, the words - and the tales - they're in there.

(There are hundreds of articles explaining to business people and marketers just how important the use of images with the right phrase is.) But it can't be just any words. They specifically use 'the right ones', the succinct ones, the ones that, in conjunction with the image, tell a spare story with a lot of resonance; very much like fairy tales always have.

People are drawn to the life in words (and trees), to the history in them but it's hard to know, when there is so much in front of us demanding our attention, what we should pay attention to. (Why should we care about this tree here when there are so many more?) 

Images help filter. Not too surprisingly, when you figure out it's not really 'words' people don't like, it's the tidal wave of text that feels impossible to process, people can start to sort out just what it is they want to pay attention to - and they go word hunting. Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and many other publications still do exceptionally well publishing multiple page essays. Novels are devoured in print and ebook form alike - perhaps more than ever. People want to read. They want words, and stories and forests and tales. They just want to choose their path so they don't feel so lost.

But how do we get people to the start of these paths and tales so they choose to walk them, themselves and, in doing so, keep them alive?

More specifically, what is a writer to do? How do we preserve our beloved fairy tales from becoming distant memories, footnotes in essays or forgotten tales in out of print books? 

The answer is simple. We have to find new ways to tell them. 

That also feels exceptionally difficult to figure out how to do. 

(The reason this post has taken as long to get up as it has is due to my search for appropriate visuals to include - and I'll be the first to admit, this whole post would have been better received had I been able to present it in a much more visual manner. I wish I had the skills to pull together reaction gifs and create "visual poems" to capture the essence of what I'm trying to communicate but I didn't grow up that way and don't have those skills... yet.)

Interestingly, dealing with this exact issue in their own times is, I believe, exactly why the Grimms, Andersen, Perrault and Wilde are still known today. (I have a post on this coming on this shortly - how these fairy tale writers made their tales truly live.)

We know, in principle, that fairy tales are very much a living thing. It's ironic that writing them down to preserve them serves to help them stagnate, almost as if they "solidify" in their written form. Often, it requires these coma-like story forms to get a jolt, usually from another media source, to wake up these 'sleeping beauties' and have people notice and love them again. And perhaps some savvy use of available tools in this "visual era" can help.

I know. It sounds exhausting and I'm right there with you. Can't we just sit in our corners and write our words and have them there ready for when people want them? I wish we could. But if we want to be part of making sure tales stay alive we need to be active as they're being redefined and retold. We need to be part of the 'telling'. The best historians don't just dig into the dusty past and tell us what happened, they explain why things happened the way they did and show us the direct connection to ourselves, how we can learn from history to learn about the world as it is now and to make a better future. Otherwise why bother with history at all?

Eventually, when the noise of the world is sorted and people know what they want to focus on, words become even more precious than before. It's then that they ask for more words, more tales. 

People will continue to come back to words. The trick is to keep the trail visible.

____________________________________________________________________

For those looking to learn more about this 'visual era', here's a short list (really!) to get you started, The ones with the orange stars are super quick, informative skims. The purple stars are recommended reads over the rest if you're short on time:

The Guardian: The New (Visual) Culture: how to produce quality in a world of quantity
*WallBlog: Turning advertising into a service: brands must embrace the hyper-visual landscape
*Social Media Examiner: 4 Businesses Leveraging Storytelling With Images
* Business 2 Community: Why Image Trumps Everything in Today's Visual Age
FastCompany: The Rise of Visual Social Media
Marketing Magazine: Brands Should Take the Visual Web Seriously, says Facebook's EMEA Boss
* Cyber Alert: Visual Storytelling Campaigns That Inspire, Motivate and Generate Action
MindFire Communications: It's A Visual World. Show Your Story
* LinkedIn: Market Researchers: Do you Speak Visual?
* MDG Advertising: It's All About the Images (Infographic)
* Wishpond Advanced Lead Generation Marketing Blog: 10 Reasons Visual Content Will Dominate 2014
SteamFeed: Why Visual Content Will Rule Digital Marketing in 2014
NeonTommy: Visual Poetry Collection 'Kern' Meshes Literature And Art

* It's one of the few shows I think is brilliantly done in every aspect and which I do my best to keep up with, even if I can only see 10 minutes of a show at a time. It's very brutal at times but I love the juxtaposition of a couple working on their relationship and raising an American family against the background of being KGB spies in America.

**  I thought the riddle response was a great touch too.