Lego's 'Frozen Northern Lights' Trailer (Series Airs Dec 9)

The upcoming Lego four-part animated shorts, revolving around Disney's main Frozen characters, are set to air December 9th (a little later than originally anticipated) on the Disney Channel, and have just released their trailer for the series.

Frozen Northern Lights will be an original story spanning multimedia art forms including books and animated shorts.“It’s a new story that follows Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff and, of course, Sven on an epic adventure to restore the Northern Lights,” Josh Gad explains. (People)

With the original Frozen cast of Kristin Bell, Josh Gad and Idina Menzel, this is primed to be popular!

Take a look:

(Nice nod to Wicked there!)

The first book for this collection, Journey to the Lights was released in July 2016  and is likely the first of many more to come.

What's the fairy tale content? Likely more snow adventure that derives from snow fairy tales like the Snow Queen, the Snow Maiden. We might get some Polar bear King references, and some holiday-jolly ones too, considering the release season (though the plan was initially to stay away from it being particularly 'holiday'-seasonal). We can also look forward to lots of variations on ice magic and good doses of courage and friendship. If we're lucky we might get some legendary references to the folklore and stories surrounding the Northern Lights, which many cultures have, and possible more troll lore too, as a young troll is a new character joining them on the journey.

The Northern Lights Adventure Notebook (illustrated) is a great companion to the book and series and might inspire a little storytelling at home. Here are a couple of pages, with two more at the link. We wish they made more books for young kids like this that inspire fairy tale imagination and magical adventure!

What impact - if any - this will have on the 'mythology' of Frozen 2 remains to be seen, but in the meantime extra magic for the yule season is always welcome.

Theater: Free Performance of "Lon Po Po" (Chinese LRRH) TODAY in Pennsylvania

For those who don't know, Lon Po Po is a Chinese variant of Red Riding Hood. It's fairly widely known, especially as a book by Ed Young was awarded a Caldecott medal and, as a result, can usually be found in libraries and schools.

A theatrical version of Lon Po Po, however, is unusual to come across! I love that they get the children involved with this, learning Chinese, twisting the tale around a bit, helping the children in the story know what to do - it's a great interactive way to learn the story, and the variant. (I love the multicultural cast involved too.)

Here are the details about today's performance:

CLARKS SUMMIT – A free performance of “Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China” will be presented at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 9, hosted by The Gathering Place at the Clarks Summit Borough building, 304 South State St.

This interactive play for children and their families is the final performance in a series presented by the Dietrich Children’s Theatre and The Gathering Place for Community, Arts and Education, a new nonprofit currently fundraising to turn the former Clarks Summit firehouse into an arts and education center.

“Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China” takes audience members on a trip to the Chinese countryside. Join three small children as they bid farewell to their father who is traveling overnight to visit their sick grandmother. The children are warned not to open the door to anyone, as the wolf may be lurking nearby. When there is a knock on the door late at night, however, the children are uncertain.

Is it their grandmother or the wolf?

Audience members will join the Dietrich Children’s Theatre and help the children figure out what to do in this unique retelling of a well-known story.

Dietrich Theater has a great collection of storytelling plays for children, including:

• Balto: A True Story of the Bravest Dog In America
• The Fairy Wife of Llyn Y Fan Fach (Welsh tale)
• The Gifts of Wali Dad (Pakistani tale)
• The Gingerbread Man 
• The Mouse's Marriage (Japanese folktale)
• Peter and the Wolf (Russian story to teach children about musical instruments)
• Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears (West African folktale)
• Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories (more than Mowgli!)
• Coyote: A Native American Trickster Tale 
• Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China (which remain part of their regular repertoire).

You can see a little preview of the performance on YouTube HERE.

And here's a great reading of the book by Ed Young, complete with music and animation. I couldn't find a better version of the video, sorry, but you get a pretty good idea from this one. It's a beautiful book and the story is wonderful - highly recommended:

News From "The Lunar Chronicles"

Lots of news coming from Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles this Monday. So much, in fact, it even got dubbed #CYBORGMONDAY.

First, for those who are having trouble waiting for the third installment of Ms. Meyer's sci-fi fairy tale series, Cress, (based on Rapunzel) you'll be happy to know that the first FIVE chapters of Cress are now available for reading (or download in the US only) for free HERE.

There's also a new book trailer for Cress HERE.

Possibly the most exciting news, though, (for me at least) is news of a just released preview/teaser of a new companion short story for The Lunar Chronicles. It's based on yet another fairy tale and is, apparently, the most requested tale Ms. Meyer gets asked to consider retelling. The story is titled The Little Android and is based on.. you guessed it: The Little Mermaid. 

What does that mean? It means we're getting a legitimate sci-fi retelling of The Little Mermaid by an author who's proven she knows both her craft and her fairy tales. I can't wait to read the whole story. Hopefully it will be released via Tor.com like Ms. Meyer's other short stories, complete with some new and gorgeous artwork to boot (Ha! Punny. Cinderella, boot... sorry. Couldn't resist.) They'll be releasing the whole story when Cress reaches a pre-order goal set by the publisher but for now you can read a teaser HERE.

There is an extra  - and Cress exclusive - incentive to pre-order when you do it through HERE and you can keep abreast of more news, and lots of pics and fan art, care of the new Tumblr HERE.

Bring on those release dates!

Cress's 1st Chapter Released + Win an ARC (So You can Keep Reading!)

From Marissa Meyer's Facebook page today:

"IT'S HERE, CRESS'S FIRST CHAPTER IS HERE."

(That would be HERE.)

And she's also released the  "cover copy" (aka the back-of-the-book blurb):

Ready?

**BUT WAIT! IF YOU HAVEN'T YET READ "CINDER" & "SCARLET", HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!!**

In this third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and prevent her army from invading Earth.  

Rapunzel On the Tower by mairimart

Their best hope lies with Cress, who has been trapped on a satellite since childhood with only her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker – unfortunately, she’s being forced to work for Queen Levana, and she’s just received orders to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.
 When a daring rescue goes awry, the group is splintered. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a higher price than she’d ever expected. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai, especially the cyborg mechanic. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.

Marissa Meyers also announced THIS:

"Once you've had your fill of Cress's first chapter, be sure to head over to my blog for your FIRST CHANCE to win an advance copy of CRESS!" 

(And that would be HERE.)

But how on earth (Ha! Punny*) do we wait until next February 4th 2014 for the rest??

(Answer: Go try to win an advanced reader copy!)

Marissa Meyer's 3rd Sci-Fi Fairy Tale "Cress" Ramping Up To Feb 2014 Release

Marissa Meyer, author of the best-selling cyborg Cinderella retelling Cinder and the Red Riding Hood inspired sequel Scarlet, leaked some exciting news on her Facebook page yesterday regarding the impatiently-awaited next installment in the series, Cress.

From Marissa Meyer's FB yesterday:

Okay guys, here's the current scoop! 1. CRESS's release date is 2/4/2014. 2. We'll be sharing the FIRST CHAPTER next week. Like, early next week. Like, SOON. 3. Cover art will be revealed in a few weeks. 4. I'll be kicking off some ARC giveaways as early as JULY, so stay tuned!!

OK. That's it: I need a fairy tale calendar of awesome upcoming events!

In case you weren't yet aware, from the ARC cover pic shown you can see Cress is inspired by Rapunzel. The included text also gives us some clues about how this sci-fi fairy tale will begin. (I'm SO looking forward to this!)

It's only relatively recent that I was able to catch up on The Lunar Chronicles. Although I'd heard nothing but great things it's fair to say, although I definitely expected excellent writing (which there was), I was fairly neutral about the series, seeing as it started off with a Cinderella interpretation*, as unusual as the premise was, but I LOVED it all.

Here's a little fairy tale bonus of the day:

On Pinterest I call them "Imag-ine-àges" - magical story image collages. They're commonly known as Picspams - collections of screencaps or photos assembled as a tribute to a story, character or idea, and I found one someone put together in honor of Marissa Meyer's first Lunar chronicles heroine, Cinder:

 I'm not going to post a review of either Cinder or Scarlet (there are hundreds of those you can check out!) BUT I will say that if you love fairy tales, are studying them and/or believe in their timeless power you need to read this series.

Note: Scarlet recently hit The New York Times Bestseller list as well! Congrats Marissa!!

*Which apart from having been done so very, many times, Cinderella stories tend to be romance-focused (and this was YA romance) - nothing wrong with that, it just isn't my genre of choice, but even with my low tolerance I wasn't bored for an instant!