Happy Monster Chicken Day!

Tabletop Gaming News

A Personal Note From Our Fairy Tale Newsroom:

We have spent almost as much time living in hospitals and doctor's offices than we have at home this past month (March), due to an emergency with our junior fairy tale newshound, so please excuse the lack of follow-through on promised posts. With his ongoing recovery still our main focus, we will be posting some of our intended articles a little late over the next couple of weeks, even though they aren't as timely for the season as we would have liked. We hope you still find them interesting.

This is one of our Fairy Tale Newsroom's favorite times of year. When we prepare for this season's magical visitors, most people expect us to mention The Easter Bunny, but not as many are familiar with The Monster Chicken. (You can read about this unusual visitor HERE.) Longtime readers of this blog will be aware, however, that this particular supernatural creature is looked forward to with more anticipation than its famous long-eared counterpart.

As the Monster Chicken plays hide-and-seek with its owner (the terribly intimidating Baba Yaga), relishing being free for the short time its absorbed magic enables it to transform each Spring, we always hope it will find a place to take refuge and catch its breath in our yard (and perhaps leave a monster egg in thanks). We prepare the night before by leaving nesting materials and a sign, welcoming the Monster Chicken to hide in our garden if it needs to, and to our collective delight, along with signs of a giant claw-footed visitor, another specially painted monster egg has appeared each year we've done so...

We have yet to catch sight of "the MC" in person but considering its origin, we thought you might like to see an old attempt at building it (in walking hut form) from a few years ago, in Minecraft Pocket Edition (a limited tablet version of the popular game). And since we are, we thought we'd throw in our homage to another fairy tale with an unusual building...

Being a cube-building game, creating organic things can be a challenge but as long as you can count, a little math, color play and imagination can make a blocky landscape quite folk art-like:

Newbie Minecrafter practicing design-via-math to create a folk-art like carpet for the purpose of creating fairy tale scenes in Minecraft (you can see a teensy bit of Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut in the background).

Baba Yaga's chicken legged hut (on every day but Easter morning...)

Fuzzy close-up of Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut from the side in Minecraft Pocket Edition.(Out of focus blocks lend themselves well to a tapestry-like impression it seems!)

An attempt at building Rapunzel's tower in Minecraft PE. Thing is, with Pocket Edition, there is a 'ceiling' so you can only build so high. Had to excavate lot before starting... interesting concept for keeping it hidden really!

Hidden tower...

Whoa. That's intimidatingly tall from this angle. (Rapunzel's tower in Minecraft PE.)

So what does the Monster Chicken look like once a year when it transforms and breaks loose? More importantly, did you give it a place to hide on its annual freedom run this year, and receive a thank-you-monster-egg in return?

Antonio De Luca's take on Babayaga

From the Seasonal Archives - Household Tales: Easter, Baba Yaga & The Monster Chicken

Bunny Beware by Michael Sowa

A little treat from my household to yours.

You've probably heard of Baba Yaga and her hut on chicken legs. But did you know the hut has its own story? 

The chicken-legged house spends all year long soaking up the magic leaking out of Baba Yaga's kitchen, and one day each new Spring (a day we call Easter), there's finally enough in its bones that a wondrous thing happens. The hut shakes its walls and shingles into feathers, breaking enough of the spell keeping it chained to Baba Yaga's bidding, to transform into the strangest half-house, half-chicken monster anyone has ever seen. 

Having picked up a few tricks living with its Master, the hut always manages to escape, forcing Baba Yaga to give chase. For a whole day, the Monster Chicken plays a mischievous game of hide-and-seek, dodging the Yaga's flying mortar and pestle by hiding in the yards of good-hearted children. Wherever it sits and makes a hurried nest, it leaves monster eggs as thank you's for the household's hospitality.  

Hut on chicken legs during the spring nesting season
Divo-Ostrov", Saint-Petersburg

At the end of one whole day and one whole night, however, the hut is tired and has enough of running. Baba Yaga catches up with it and drags her little house back to their home in the woods. There it gives one great shake before turning its body back into a hut and settling into a good long sleep, dreaming of the next year when it can run on its own again.  

But even though the hut is sleeping, sometimes the dreams are so strong, it gets up on its legs, stretches them out, turns around and settles down again, without even waking up...

Update April 2017: My son, now 10, still adores this tale of ours (and if any of you have had visits from the Monster Chicken  my son would LOVE to hear about it!). With the fairly recent news confirming many dinosaurs as having feathers, in addition to being related to chickens, this story no longer seems quite as fanciful... ;) He looks forward to visits from the Monster Chicken even more than the Easter Bunny. Frankly, I think the Easter Bunny is tickled to have the magical company in our yard every year. 

Mystic Chicken by Ekaterina/Philieria

 Do you have a personal 'Household Tale' of your own you'd like to share? Write to fairytalenews AT gmail DOT com. We'd love to share your personal traditions and stories.

Happy Easter, Ēostre, Passover & Spring Sunday!

Happy Easter!

(Or whatever you call this feast day of flowers, egg-hunts, spring goodness and Monster Chicken visits!)

In honor of the day and also to encourage the sentiment of hope and the importance of keeping our tales, fables and folklore alive, I thought I'd post some gorgeous artwork from Rise of the Guardians  - specifically Bunnymund, who's the guardian of HOPE, and spreads that sentiment with extra enthusiasm (and colorful eggs) during Spring on Easter morning.
            
It doesn't hurt for me personally, that in the movie, Bunnymund is specifically Australian, which, we're told is where the original Spring came from.  (Wow, now that's a story and it works very well with the idea of Australia being nicknamed Down Under, as well as the Persephone myth and our sunburnt land's propensity to blossom instantly, and colorfully, back to life at the first hint of rain...) He also has his Warren Headquarters underneath the continent and tunnels that lead to everywhere in the world, so he can race around the globe in seconds.

I know many people have had an exceptionally difficult year-past and the Winter/Christmas season was really rough. You're feeling tired, overwhelmed and unmotivated and that's completely normal. The great thing about Spring is that nature is eager to help you get through that and tries to show you with each new flower, leaf and egg-hunt giggles that there are still good times to be had.

Let some magic make you smile this weekend and remember your child inside:

So this Spring, hold Hope fast in your hearts and watch it spread wherever you go. Tell your stories, encourage other to tell theirs and renew your wonder of the world. It's an amazing place if you remember how to see it.

Blessings to all my fairy tale friends this Easter Day!

Bunnymnd: "That's a lotta hair fer an anklebiter!"
Merida: "Aye. An' you're a lotta hare..."
Bunnymund: "Fair enough. Least you didn't call me a kangaroo. How'dya like yur eggs?"

Household Tales: Easter, Baba Yaga & The Monster Chicken

Bunny Beware by Michael Sowa

A little treat from my household to yours.

You've probably heard of Baba Yaga and her hut on chicken legs. But did you know the hut has its own story? 

The chicken-legged house spends all year long seeping up the magic leaking out of Baba Yaga's kitchen and one day each new Spring (a day we call Easter), there's finally enough in its bones that a wondrous thing happens. The hut shakes its walls and shingles into feathers, breaking enough of the spell keeping it chained to Baba Yaga's bidding, to transform into the strangest half-house, half-chicken monster anyone has ever seen. 

Having picked up a few tricks living with its Master, the hut always manages to escape, forcing Baba Yaga to give chase. For a whole day, the Monster Chicken plays a mischievous game of hide-and-seek, dodging the Yaga's flying mortar and pestle by hiding in the yards of good-hearted children. Wherever it sits and makes a hurried nest, it leaves monster eggs as thank you's for the household's hospitality.  

Hut on chicken legs during the spring nesting season
Divo-Ostrov", Saint-Petersburg

At the end of one whole day and one whole night, however, the hut is tired and has enough of running. Baba Yaga catches up with it and drags her little house back to their home in the woods. There it gives one great shake before turning its body back into a hut and settling into a good long sleep, dreaming of the next year when it can run on its own again.  

But even though the hut is sleeping, sometimes the dreams are so strong, it gets up on its legs, stretches them out, turns around and settles down again, without even waking up...

Note: My son adores this tale of ours (though if any of you have had visits from the Monster Chicken  my son would LOVE to hear about it!) and looks forward to visits from the Monster Chicken even more than the Easter Bunny. Frankly, I think the Easter Bunny is tickled to have the magical company in our yard every year. 

Mystic Chicken by Ekaterina/Philieria

 Do you have a personal 'Household Tale' of your own you'd like to share? Write to fairytalenews AT gmail DOT com. We'd love to share your personal traditions and stories.

"Maleficent" Banner Released Today Shows Us Sleeping Beauty's World (& What Kind Of Movie This Really Is)

The new banner poster for Maleficent - click to see much larger image

We saw a blurry three quarter view from a pic taken at CinemaCon but here's the full image of the World of Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent (original source). Best of all, it makes it clear what kind of movie this really is: an epic family fantasy adventure blockbuster movie, on the scale of Legend.

You must admit, Disney are really good at these 'world of' teaser banners. They definitely call to mind the epic fantasy paintings from series book covers like The Belgariad (remember those?) and similar. Both the US Alice in Wonderland and the Oz the Great and Powerful banners are gorgeous looking, no matter what you eventually thought of the movies. (You can click on the posters below to view them a bit larger but you get the idea: world = magical). I just hope Maleficent proves to be much better than either, and is better at capturing the imagination - like Labyrinth, Legend and ET were, way back when.

  

I also really, REALLY hope it's good, because there has been a decided lack of family fantasy movies in general* for the last 30-ish years (other than animation or talking animal movies) and although my son has just reached that wonderful age where I can show him some of the classics (there has been some serious pleading to get a "My other ride is Falkor" license plate for our car), I'd love to have him experience the currently-in-theaters, en-masse-social-excitement for a new fantasy or fairy tale film that I had when I was his age. Not to mention, if Maleficent does well and hits the magical, substantial yet not TOO dark, target for families, we'll get more fairy tale family movies in the near future - that's just about guaranteed.

Seeing fairy tales in the theater when you are still at that age where Santa, The Easter Bunny (and in our house, Baba Yaga's Monster Chicken) comes to visit you every year makes a huge impact on a person and not just as an escape or piece of entertainment. I dearly hope Maleficent is something I can take him to see. And it means we'll get help raising a generation of people who love and are aware of fairy tales again.

For something to compare the foreign fairy tale marketing, here's the Italian poster, which has the added subtitle "The Secret of Sleeping Beauty". What are your thoughts on the different approaches? And does the "world reveal" of the top poster make you look forward to the movie or worry that we're about to be treated to another disOZster?

*Yes, we've had the Harry Potter film franchise but honestly, I can't really show more than the first two to my kid yet. They get darker and darker with every sequel too, so, true family films, notsomuch. We had Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and the sequels but only the first one really made any sort of social impact. The Golden Compass was epic but rather high concept and difficult for the under-tens to understand and enjoy and Stardust just wasn't little-kid-friendly conceptually (and check the dates on all these movies too - they were quite far apart). There have been smaller films (and a number of more recent foreign films) that have been excellent but not many people seem to know them. Sadly, most of the really big fantasy films have been for teen and older audiences: Pan's Labyrinth, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit,  Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Huntsman, Jack the Giant Slayer etc or they've been so effects-dependent with subpar writing, eg Oz the Great and Powerful, that the magic and possibility of jump-starting kids' imaginations has been sucked right out. While I adore grown-up fantasy movies, I'd really love my kid to grow up loving fantasy and fairy tales being buzzed about in popular culture as well. It feels a bit like everyone who grew up watching The Neverending Story, ET, The Princess Bride, Jumanji, Legend etc went on to make Lord of the Rings or Doctor Who and forgot to make good quality fantasy their kids could participate in viewing and loving as well. It's about time it came back around to an epic but family friendly fantasy. Hopefully this will fan the flame of good family fantasy and fairy tale movies and perhaps spawn some TV series in the same vein as well. (More Storyteller please!)

Baba Yaga & Her Baby Chicken Leg Shacks

I adore these!

Not only has Melissa Sue Stanley been creating Chicken Leg Shacks (see my previous post on these adorable plush chicken legged houses HERE) but she's created a Baba Yaga and story to go with them... AND, if you live close by, you can go see them in person at the Stuff This! - the 3rd Annual Plush Show in Columbus, Ohio. It opens today (December 5th) and runs till the 30th. You can also get a chicken leg shack - or a strawberry monster - of your own from the exhibition through HERE (other fibre/plush artist's work available here too). If you're interested in buying, be quick. They're selling out fast!I should probably have saved this for my "12 Days of [Gifts Before] Christmas" series which starts tomorrow (with giveaway!) but I just couldn't wait... consider it an early bonus!

I simply have to share Melissa Sue's Baba Yaga story (per her various blogs):

Baba Yaga and her chicken shacks:
Where did you think chicken shacks come from?She raises them in her garden.They frolic around the blue roses and valerian, and eat healthy amounts of bug legs and children's fingers.In the morning she puts on that old dusty coat and big black boots, and stomps into the chilly yard where they greet her, chirping, and chomping the tiny sharp teeth in their keyholes.The world needs more Baba Yaga.

Isn't that the most adorable bit of creepy ever?

Here's a sketch of her ideas for this great piece - you can see her attention to detail and story very clearly in her notes. I really appreciate that she's been able to handle detail and story without over-complicating the design. Very nice!You can see her blogs HERE and HERE which showcase a lot more of her work and her process and visit her website HERE. She also has an Etsy shop HERE though her chicken shacks aren't listed here yet.