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  • The Tale of Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Tom Kitten was created soon after Beatrix Potter had moved into her farm in the Lake District, which she’d bought with the proceeds earned from The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The illustrations are recognisably of Hill Top and of the farmstead’s surrounding village. The cats of the illustrations were real cats who […]

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    November 26, 2019
  • The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    Which mouse are you? Fight, flight, freeze or appease? Beatrix Potter’s Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910) is inclined to appease, as perhaps you must, if you are small and vulnerable. Except every mouse I have ever met is a bolshy, ‘sit on this and swivel’ type. In winter they hang out behind the dishwasher and will hurtle…

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    November 22, 2019
  • The Tale of Samuel Whiskers by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Samuel Whiskers by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Samuel Whiskers by Beatrix Potter was originally called The Roly-Poly Pudding and written as a Christmas present to a child. Potter’s image of the cat rolled up in dough is one of those resonant illustrations which, once seen, can never be unseen. Perhaps this image scarred you, too, as a child.

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    November 18, 2019
  • The Tale of Johnny Town-mouse by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Johnny Town-mouse by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    Leading up to 1918, Beatrix Potter’s publishers were asking her for a new story. This was wartime. Austerity all around. Frederick Warne and Co. were affected alongside everyone else and required something new from their bestselling children’s author. But Beatrix had moved to the country and the country was keeping her very busy. Rather than…

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    November 16, 2019
  • The Tale Of Pigling Bland by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale Of Pigling Bland by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    As you read “The Tale of Pigling Bland” (1913) imagine Beatrix Potter sitting in a pig shed with her art gear and muck boots on, because that’s how she spent one summer, diligently rendering pigs (and then decking them out in clothes). Apparently she struggled to knock this one out. She’d had a big year.

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    November 10, 2019
  • The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906) is one of Beatrix Potter’s more popular stories, and is an excellent example of how to write a sympathetic main character. Publishers had been telling Potter since she wrote it in 1893 for her last nanny’s son that frogs aren’t cute and fluffy enough to warrant main character…

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    August 30, 2019
  • Mrs Tiggy-Winkle by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    Mrs Tiggy-Winkle by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    Beatrix Potter wrote Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle specifically to appeal to girls. She thought that Lucie’s feminine garb, with its emphasis on the lost clothing items (o, calamity!), would appeal to girls especially. Even today, authors and publishers are creating children’s books for the gender binary* e.g. this book will appeal to boys because X; this will…

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    August 23, 2019
  • The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    Beatrix Potter was already popular by the time she published The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (1911). The introduction to our 110th anniversary copy says the tale was created specifically to appeal to a new, American audience, with the inclusion of chipmunks. Unfortunately, Beatrix had never seen a chipmunk in real life. She must have relied…

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    July 30, 2019
  • The Tale of Mr Tod by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Mr Tod by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Mr. Tod by Beatrix Potter (1912) is a child-in-jeopardy crime thriller. See my post on thrillers and also my post on secrets and scams.

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    July 29, 2019
  • The Tale of Ginger and Pickles by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Ginger and Pickles by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Ginger and Pickles by Beatrix Potter is a story of utopian, idealised capitalism, first published 1909. This is how we’d all like capitalism to work — small local businesses provide goods and services; those friends providing the best goods and services win out, those ill-suited to small business find other, more suitable…

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    July 26, 2019
  • The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. Squirrel Nutkin is an example of a story from the First Age of Children’s Literature, though Beatrix Potter herself did much to usher in the more modern style of children’s story.

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    November 16, 2018
  • The Tale Of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    The Tale Of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter Analysis

    As Marjery Hourihan points out in Deconstructing the Hero, Peter Rabbit is basically an Odyssean story. A male hero goes out, has an adventure, faces death and then arrives home, changed. Beatrix Potter was following a long tradition of storytelling when she wrote this one.

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    May 11, 2016
  • Favourite Words of Moira Rose

    Favourite Words of Moira Rose

    Moira Rose is the dramatic matriarch of the Rose family and a soap opera star, who takes an interest in civics after moving to Schitt’s Creek.

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    August 21, 2022
  • Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad: A Case Study In Kindness

    Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad: A Case Study In Kindness

    Conflict, conflict, conflict. Writers seeking storytelling advice are constantly bombarded with the message: Every story needs conflict; nay, every scene! But is this really true? When advice-givers say ‘conflict’, what are they really talking about? Successful stories don’t need conflict… if conflict means arguing, wrestling and wishing each other dead. Stories need opponents. Here’s the…

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    February 20, 2022
  • Post Christmas Moods In Art and Illustration

    Post Christmas Moods In Art and Illustration

    The period between Christmas and New Year is a classic example of a liminal space in which we feel this sense of unease, captured best through art, perhaps.

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    December 26, 2021
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