Maleficent's Magical World - New Creature Concept art (aka Maleficent [& Fairy Tales] for Boys - 1 of 2)

I'm dedicating this particular post to my son, because, apart from the dragon, ("She's a DRAGON! Like Smaug!"*) he is completely enamored of the little creatures he catches glimpses of in the trailers and TV spots. Actually, it's going to be post 1 of 2, focusing on Maleficent for boys - this is the 'art' one and the other will be... well, you'll just have to tune in and see. ;)

(All this really means for you readers, is that you'll get another post of all the other Maleficent stuff that's been released this week very soon too.)

At the head of the post if one of the new character posters, featuring most of his favorite things about the movie (although I do believe he secretly finds Maleficent pretty awesome, what with her powerful wings and then showing serious magical clout).

The rest of the images are a whole lot of newly released concept art, all of which he's asked if they can come and live with us. I kind of wish they could too. About the only things missing merchandise-wise to date are creature sculpts/dolls/toys of these little critters, but more on that in part two...

The other thing my son is fascinated by? The best-buddy raven Diaval, and that he gets transformed into many different creatures (see the wolf above, although I don't know if there's a Diaval-wolf in the final movie), all keeping some of his bird aspects. I think he particularly likes that Diaval is annoyed at getting turned into a human, because he completely relates to that.

Why am I sharing this personal stuff? Because my son, despite having as balanced an upbringing regarding girls and boys things and fairy tales as I can manage (and it's been a priority of mine), he still has a very strong sense of "that's for girls" vs "that's for boys". What this movie is showing him, unlike much fairy tale marketing these days, is that there are aspects of fantasy and fairy tale stories (that aren't mainly focused on wars and knights) that are very appealing to boys. The creatures, the transformations, talking/communicating animals, the danger and the strength - he loves it all. He loves beautiful things too (most little boys I've met love beauty, especially natural/nature beauty), so has no problem with the pretty stuff, as long as there's balance. For example, in Adventure Time, he doesn't mind spending time with Princess Bubblegum story lines because, in his eyes, the candy kingdom is more a boys' idea of candy than the typical girl's representation of all-sugar-and-sweetness and Beemo, who is a very cute girl character, is awesome to him because she's tech savvy, creative, and rocks at video games.

He is not the only one enamored of these forest beings. I recently found a post by ex-Geeky Editor at Buzzfeed, Donna Dickens (@MildlyAmused on Twitter & currently blogging at HitFix HERE) I'm going to quote a ton of because the sentiments are so very similar in our house here (emphasis in bold, and underlined and yelled, politely, in Disney's direction, is mine):

Ignore the right side of the banner. Pretend it isn't there. Yes yes, dark and gloomy. Spiky thorns. Spooky rocks. We've seen it all before. Instead, look at these super cute sentient woodland species! OH MY GOD THEY ARE ADORABLE with their little spines and big noses and rock chins and floppy ears. Who are these tiny, cuddly people? A type of fairy perhaps? Or just more mythological creatures? Doesn't matter, I'm sure they play a part in the big battle sequence implied in the trailers. 

Don't they look as if they'd be right at home in a remake of 'Labyrinth' or 'The Dark Crystal?' NOT that those need to be remade, Hollywood. Back off. Seriously. Even the little malformed ones are so cute and fluffy, which is no easy trick when you don't even have fur!. Look at those sweet doe eyes and weird but precious boomerang noses! And are those noble treants wearing loincloths? How thoughtful to remember the PG-13 rating. 

And then there's these little fellas. The one in the middle is probably grumpy because he got stuck with the two nudists. But maybe the lack of clothes means they're pets and not people? I want an elephant nosed, web-handed amorphous blob pet!. If Disney doesn't turn these two into stuffed animals, their marketing department is missing a huge squishable opportunity.

Read the whole (fantastic) post HERE.

Ah marketing. Disney would totally be taking ALL-MA-MONEH if these creatures were considered toyable. The begging and the big, giant anime eyes a kid of seven can aim in your direction, along with the double whammy of "..it's about fairy tales Mama!" is a recipe for "buy all the toys even though it means we're eating noodles for the next 3 months...". It's bad enough he's already begging me for this pricey little sweatshirt:

While I don't know much about how these creatures shown here are represented in the film, apart from the battle scenes, I can tell you that my son realizing that the idea of "fairy" in fairy tales everywhere (ie not just the stories I choose to read to him but in general knowledge), doesn't just apply to pixies with wings but also to any non-human magical creatures (right through to very powerful representations like the ent-like warrior riding the forest hog), is one of those breakthrough things. Why? It has made him more open to reading ALL the tales. It's one thing for your fairy tale obsessed mother to constantly tell you fairy tales are as much for boys as they are for girls, but when he sees evidence of that in the media, it makes an impact and (get this) sends him back to me to read him more of what I've been reading to him all along.**

The media and advertising are so very powerful and loom large in influencing our kid's ideas of how they see the world. While my son's experience may be more unique because he's already had fairy tales in his life (thanks to me), it still takes the "outside world" to show him a glimpse of the same before he'll truly take it on board. It's taken something like the Maleficent trailers for him to realize that "Adventure Time is kind of like a bunch of fairy tale stuff mixed up with weird and crazy fun stuff.." and that "Star Wars would be kind of like a fairy tale if it had trolls and castles instead of aliens and space ships and light sabers and stuff..."Now he'll even catch sight of some of the images I scroll through on Pinterest, eg a guy with antlers, and spontaneously say, "Maybe that's one of those don't-mess-with-me fairies, like Maleficent is friends with".

I am so happy he is at a "wonder-ous" age for tales and can experience all this social buzz on a fairy tale in his formative years, especially in a way that opens the road to looking back on what he's already been exposed to with delight and the way forward to even more.

Addendum: For an interesting footnote to this riff on the importance of balance, I'll share something else on the "for boys" end of the scale that made me realize this even more. My son and I watched Jack the Giant Slayer together on the weekend (with my hands at the ready to over his eyes for any potential gore) and his comment about the giants was: "Why are they so stupid? You wouldn't think giants that big and that old would be so dumb." and "Where are the nice things the giants have? If they're hundreds of years old you think they would have had lots of time to build awesome stuff and make cool and weird looking houses and forests and stuff but everything is broken and nothing is alive..." Also interesting to note, he thought the Ewan McGregor character (Captain of the Guard?) was really heroic, whereas Jack didn't seem very smart. And we agreed that Jack would make a terrible king. "That's not the Jack you named me after, is it Mama? Because I know I'm smarter than that!" You are SO right kiddo.

*Gosh I hope he's right and she really IS a dragon and it's not just Diaval.
** These reasons, more than any others, have me crossing my fingers and toes that Maleficent will be good.

Plants vs Zombies vs Fairy Tales

If you've been wondering how to introduce your video-game-loving little charge to fairy tales, you now have a new weapon in your arsenal. (Actually two, as I discovered on a trip to the grocery store today.)

Based on the popular-with-all-ages franchise Plants vs Zombies, we get retellings of two fairy tales (so far), retold (with zombies) for ages 4 to 8 with some unusual twists (and stickers!):

Brains and the Beanstalk
The Three Little Pigs Fight Back

They're cartoony, colorful and super cute but most importantly of all, the fairy tales are even more recognizable than you might expect. I particularly like that both books emphasize the use of, you guessed it, BRAINS!

Here are the synopses:

Plants Vs Zombies: The Three Little Pigs Fight BackThe famous fairy-tale pigs are thrown into the fun-dead world of Plants vs. Zombies, the award-winning video game.Instead of the big bad wolf, the brave pigs must escape a mob of fun-loving, brain-eating zombies from the wildly popular game. The pigs will have to think fast and team up with some zombie-fighting plants to stay alive.

Plants vs Zombies: Brains and the BeanstalkNow in a thrilling picture book for kids, Jack—of Jack and the Beanstalk fame—enters the fantastical world of the game. He will battle the zombies with his magical beanstalk fighting by his side. The fun never dies in this action-filled adventure for kids with full-color illustrations.

I've seen far worse modernizing and retellings of both these tales so I'm quite happy to read them to my kid (or have him read them to me now!). I do find it interesting that they chose these two tales. It tells me that the popular consensus of "best/most popular tales for boys" include these two (because, let's face it, at age 4-6, it's not little girls they expect to be reading these books ad there's no Plants vs Zombies merchandise in the girls section of stores either). 

I find it REALLY interesting that Plants vs Zombies decided to go with fairy tales at all, when there are already many other "story lines" (I use the term somewhat loosely - maybe "premise" would be a better word) in the world of the game already. I guess, if nothing else, these two tales are seen as combative (which, honestly is a new way of thinking about them for me). Replacing the fairy tale adversaries with zombies in each tale makes for an interesting mirror to the trend in YA and adult speculative fiction and urban fantasy, in which zombies (which represent a whole lot of different and enlightening things that adults currently see as our main trials and adversaries in the current day) are currently being represented as our most collective and societal fear. That being the case, these books should set kids up to be well armed and prepared against zombies of any kinds in their futures!

Sidenote: I do wonder at the plants versus zombies idea. Why plants versus these monsters? Is it the refuse to die-undead vs the pushing up daisies state bodies are supposed to be in for the natural order to stay in balance and continue? (Yes - I find many weird things fascinating!)

The books were released on August 6, 2013, are available on iTunes and Amazon (check title links above at synopses) and have started making their way into grocery stores around the US.

Article: Fairy Tales Or Scary Tales?

Mystic Tales (Sehirli Naghillar) published by Tutu Publishing House

From The Globe and Mail: Fairy tales or scary tales: Should we sanitize stories for our kids?

I'm getting pretty tired of these types of articles. This one only addresses children being read and exposed to fairy tales rather than all the various ways society has used them through history so I'll stick with the kid angle in this post too.

This one appears to have done some research but although it's well written, really the writer is just regurgitating quotes used elsewhere to support a point of view, which is fine and valid except that it isn't really presented as a single writer's point of view. It's presented more as an issue brought about by research. While it quotes Professor Zipes a number of times the aim is always to get back to the sensational rather than consider what he was actually saying. And that's a large part of the problem. It's not about the fairy tales at all really. Nor is it about the children, despite what people think they're discussing. It's about making people feel like "responsible parents" if they can apparently think more intelligently than their predecessors and band such horrible things from scarring their children. Like they apparently were.

I have to honestly wonder if the writers of these articles (there are a rash of them at the moment) remember what it was like to be a child. I wouldn't have survived without fairy tales but even if I was unique in that regard (which I know I'm not but let's just say for the sake of argument I was an anomaly among the children of the world), I'd rather my kid pick up a book of fairy tales with all the gore intact than watch or hear the nightly news. That's far more frightening and has nothing to offer but fear, encouraging you to worry about things you have no control over and are largely being speculated about at best (break down any local news and you'll find the factual content is actually quite light). One thing fairy tales do for children is take away uncertainty. They're pretty clear about what happens to whom and why. To have these "definites", these boundaries, is actually very comforting for a child. Uncertainty makes for instability and adults cause enough of that even without meaning to.

You should be familiar with the article in case anyone holds it up to you and starts using quotes. Just be aware of what's really being said.

You can read the two pages HERE. It comes with bonus summaries of the original classic gory stories of Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the not-included-in-the-Grimm's-collection tale of How Some Children Played At Butchering. Classic.

To give you something positive to read to balance this out, the illustrations in the post are from a fairy tale book published in Azerbaijan in 2004 with illustrations by Nusrat Hajiyev.



From the article on Azerbaijan International, about the book:

Fairy tale books have always been very popular in Azerbaijan. Even during Soviet times when thousands of books were published each year, such books, even those of lowest quality were in high demand, according to Tarlan. Even when other books remained on the shelves, fairy tales sold quite easily since folklore is an integral part of life. Every child grows up listening to fairy tales told by their mothers and grandmothers. 

"Our aim was to publish the most monumental book ever produced about Azerbaijani fairy tales," said Tarlan, when describing his vision for the book. "That's why we decided not to rush this job." Indeed, it ended up taking one year to select, rewrite and edit the 12 tales, and two more years to create the art work and design the book. 

"Since there are so many fairy tales in Azerbaijan, we knew we couldn't publish all of them," said Tarlan. "That's why we decided to concentrate on 'mystic tales', which are full of supernatural elements, including divs (monsters). 

That's when they consulted Maharram Gasimli, Director of the Literature and Folklore Department at the Academy of Sciences, along with Ilham Rahimli and Zeynal Mammadli. Most of these Azerbaijani fairy tales had been collected during the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, during that period, personal tape recorders did not exist that would have guaranteed the authenticity of the tales. Folklorists were sent off on expeditions to remote areas to collect the tales. However, their methodology was dubious. They knew that they would be paid according to the quantity of pages they produced so there's no wonder that they lent a hand to enhance and expand the stories themselves. On other occasions, some of the tales were modified or censored because they did not fit the strict guidelines of Soviet ideology, in terms of Socialist Realism where contentment was supposed to have spread throughout the land.Of course, the original version of such stories can rarely be traced, and it's only natural that each storyteller always injects his or her own vision of reality and world experience into the telling of these tales. These are natural processes that take place in any oral medium any place in the world.  

Mystic Tales is based upon TUTU staff's own literary tastes. The twelve folk tales that were selected are: Bakhtiyar, Divbecha, Pari khanim (Mrs. Pari), Malikmammad, Dash uzuk (Stone ring), Shahzade Bandali (Prince Bandali), Tapdig, Ayghir Hasan (Stalion Hasan), Nar Giz (Pomegranate Girl), Guru Khala, Ibrahim, and Goychak Fatma (Pretty Fatma; an Azerbaijani version of the well-known fairy tale, Cinderella).

You can read the whole article on this special collection (and why it's so special) HERE.