picture books, story apps, movies, short stories
Hansel and Gretel is one of the best-known fairytales. Almost everybody knows the basic story but, more than that, this tale is the ur-story for many seemingly unrelated modern ones. For example, whenever a character meets a character in a ‘forest’ (whether the forest is symbolic or not), the audience is put in mind of …
Into The Forest by Anthony Browne is story book, part ‘toy book’. Young readers learn to look at pictures and search for intertextuality, as each illustration links to a well-known fairytale. This makes the book popular for classroom use, along with the Shrek films and modern stories with fairytales as ur-texts. Anthony Browne writes postmodern picturebooks and …
Continue reading “Intertextuality of Into The Forest by Anthony Browne”
Gorilla is the book that made Anthony Browne’s name. WHAT HAPPENS? A girl called Hannah — about 6 or 7 years of age — feels that her father doesn’t spend any time with her. She often wants to do something with him but he is always busy. One day her father gifts her a toy gorilla, as …
notes from David Beagley, La Trobe University, podcast available on iTunes U. A Walk In The Park is one of Browne’s very earliest picturebooks — his second after Through The Magic Mirror. . 25 years later, Anthony Browne decided to redo this book in a much more postmodern style. The postmodern elements are just starting–they’re mainly …
Continue reading “Genres In Literature: Lecture 06: Postmodern Picturebooks: Anthony Browne”
Unreal is a collection of 8 short stories, first published 1985. This was the book that really kicked-off Jennings’ career as a children’s author.
“The Doll’s House” is a short story by Katherine Mansfield, set in New Zealand, written 1922. For young readers, this is a good introduction to Mansfield’s work. Its main themes are seen across children’s literature and are readily accessible in this work for adults. Unlike stories such as “The Garden Party” and “Bliss”, the reader …
This is my collection of fairytale links. I’m interested in fairytales from a writing perspective — how do fairytales help us to create new, contemporary stories? TWO OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF FAIRYTALES the “serene, anonymous” voice in which it’s told the “conventional, stock figures” who inhabit it. This is according to American poet …
The word ‘surrealism’ has a different use in everyday English from its meaning in critical discourse. Surrealism in everyday English: I don’t understand it. Weird somehow. Creepy. Like a dream. Disparate things are together and don’t make sense. Surrealism in critical discourse: Over and above. Literally, super-real (from French). ‘Surreal’ is a modern word and does …
Hop O’ My Thumb is so similar to Hansel and Gretel you might wonder how both co-existed. Both stories have: A time of famine In which the parents decide to leave their children in the woods A trail of pebbles A second abandonment, further into the woods A welcoming cottage in the woods A cannibalistic …
I recently looked into The Magic Porridge Pot (a.k.a. Sweet Porridge), part of a whole category of folk tales about pots of overflowing food. Related, there is another category of folk tales about food that runs away. In the West, the most famous of those would have to be The Gingerbread Man, but have you …