In Which We Shake Our Fairy Tale Feathers and Discover New Books

Husbando and I did not end up hanging the lights this weekend. Just as well since we had some severe weather blow through. (Get it? Har Har Har.) High winds, severe thunderstorms, and a tornado watch had us in the basement for a minute Sunday night. No major damage to report, thank goodness. Roxie did look pretty cute hanging out in her winter sweater though...

My entire stock of Thanksgiving books was checked out over the weekend. Hooray for circulation! Holiday books are nice because they make no-brainer displays, but you have to be careful with these in a public library, as the goal is to be all-inclusive. It is better to just put the books out where patrons can locate them and leave it at that.

With some new found display space, I put together a group of feathered fairy tales.

Wordplay is fun!

[Original Image from Henny Penny by Paul Galdone]

The display is a combination of folk and fairy tales featuring a few favorite feathered friends, Henny Penny, Little Red Hen, and Ugly Duckling. All are timeless tales with important lessons to be learned (of course). The neat part is to see the very different interpretations all together.

Henny Penny a.k.a. Chicken Little a.k.a. Chicken Licken is one of my favorite folk tales. Depending on who is telling you the story, there is a happy ending and a not-so-happy-ending. The feel good version leaves you with bravery - "don't be a chicken" - as the moral of the story. In the other version the birds are all eaten up by a wily fox. The moral of this version is not to believe everything you are told. In general, I prefer the darker versions of folk and fairy tales, though this is not always the case. I like a little darkness to a story but some are just downright scary, i.e. Lon Po Po by Ed Young and, holy cow, Bluebeard by Charel Perrault.

On a lighter note, Henny Penny brings back memories of a little yellow plastic hen with a blue bonnet that my sister and I aptly named, Henny Penny, as she was also a coin bank. To my knowledge, she is still stowed away in a closet in our family lake house with the five other toys left behind from the last hundred years. With limited options for play things on rainy days, (puzzles with missing pieces, an old hat, a hammer and nails...) we were resigned to running around with Henny Penny, yelling, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

Anyhoo, here are a few picks from the display.

The Little Red Hen by Heather Forest, The Little Red Hen by Paul Galdone, The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton, Henny Penny by Paul Galdone, Chicken Little by Rebecca and Ed Emberly, The Ugly Duckling by H.C. Anderson and illustrated by Pirkko Vainio, The Ugly Duckling adapted and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, The Ugly Duckling retold and illustrated by Rachel Isadora

We recieved a pretty large delivery of new materials today and there were two books I am very excited about. First, Friends by Eric Carle.

It is a hard thing for children when their friends move away. Hard for adults, for that matter. With his beautiful illustrations, Carle captures the determination of a little boy searching for his long lost friend through rivers, dark nights, and dense forests. I found the photo of three-year-old Eric Carle and his childhood friend, Juni, at the end of the book especially endearing.

Second, how did I not know about THIS?!

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

I. AM. SO. EXCITED. The Thirteenth Tale is one of my absolute favorite books and I have been waiting forever (okay, seven years) for Diane Setterfield to write a second novel. I just about flipped out of my chair when it showed up today. I cannot wait to let you know how it is! In the mean time, if you have not yet had the chance, read The Thirteenth Tale. You will not be disappointed. If you have read and enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale, I would recommend The House at Riverton or The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. Creepy old houses, ghost stories, intricately woven mysteries, deep family secrets... how can you not just eat it up? Happy reading!