The Dolls' House Fairy by Jane Ray

I recently bought 3 Jane Ray picture books for J.  I have been fascinated by Jane Ray’s artwork for years.  When I worked in bookselling, I purchased all of the Berlie Doherty Fairy Tales, having been drawn in by the wonderful pictures that decorated the pages and brought the words to life.  I only wished there were more drawings...  How could I resist then The Doll’s House Fairy, Can you Catch a Mermaid? And The Apple Pip Princess. 

Our favourite of these titles and the best one for J’s age group is The Doll’s House Fairy. 

The story goes like this... Every Saturday morning Rosy and her Dad work on decorating her doll’s house together but when he suddenly becomes ill Rosy is surprised to find a little fairy in the doll’s house.  A messy, cheeky, quite unconventional little fairy...

This book is exquisite both in the simplicity of its story and the detailed, satisfying interpretation of the story in the illustrations.  Each page is full of colour, childhood wonder, nostalgia and tiny details which little girls just love to spot and point out to you... A miniature toy deer, and another one and another one, the cat sneaking a taste of the Saturday morning hot chocolate, the fairy peeking out from the doll’s house bedclothes...  Scenes are built as the reader either looks into the doll’s house or cleverly into the real house where the little girl, Rosy, lives with her family.

I love real doll’s houses for their tininess and this book captures the love of ‘tiny’ perfectly, right to the very last page and right to the very sweet happy ending. 

This book is such a pleasure to read to J, a pleasure to look at and a pleasure to hold in my hands... thank you Jane Ray.

for the love of hand-me-downs

Our local shops are so full to brimming with the brand new but incredibly cheap things we need and don't need that I am often more inclined towards a hand-me down, a secondhand, a used or previuosly loved item... 
Around half of J's toy boxes are filled with toys from my parents attic or charity shops or other hand-me-downs.  These, strangely are the most played with toys.  Do toys grow more intriguing once used by another child?  Do hand-me-downs have a little aura about them?  I think so.  Perhaps hand-me-downs feel unique as they stand alone, not chosen from a row of identical toys on the shelf?

Today has been a hand-me-down sort of day.  First some books, 10p each from the library sale.  Things like Goldilocks & the Tree Bears by Lauren Child and Polly Borland (which we already own in hardback but now I don't have to worry about it being torn!)  J loves the Goldilocks story and this version is particularly well done, quirky and each photograph illustration is exquisite in tiny, pretty detail; little teddy, little apples, little bowls of real porridge, little red shoes.  For 10p I feel like I stole it.  We also picked up Monkey & Me by Emily Gravett (we already own the brilliant Orange Pear Apple Bear, great for the tiny ones and later they can 'read' it themselves).  each page is a surprise on first reading and again the illustrations are fantastic, full of detail and yest mostly simple in red and black sketches.  Lastly a book full of the most wonderful artwork and a simple cat & mouse chase story, Mouse, Look Out by Judy Waite & Norma Burgin.  If you love black cats and old houses full of lost things then you will enjoy reading this to your little one.  Again I love the detail in this one, fallen leaves and ivy creeping, cobwebs, old newspaper and broken crockery.  Some very hasty reviews, but check these books out if you can... and hopefully you'll find them for 10p somewhere!

I heart hand-me-downs... and the same goes for clothes, particularly baby and little girl clothes that they grow out of so quickly.  Freecycle is great for this of course but also my friends and I with similar age girls, share clothes among them.  We live at different ends of the country but post the most pretty 'good will' clothes packages to each other now and again.  Its the most fun package to receive and we had one today for B!  So our living room floor is currently scattered with books and pretty prints in pink and red... not to mention the baby and the 3 year old ...  So I better get back to them.

The Lying Carpet

We are in the library at least twice a week so I always spot the new titles and am often the first person to hire things out (!) Last week I took home The Lying Carpet by David Lucas. It is the most head spinning book. I think it reminds me that life is a choice, its about truth and lies, inertia versus adventure, whether to watch or whether to 'do'.... that sort of thing. It involves a talking tiger rug which frankly I just love... and a beautiful little girl statue called Faith. The drawings are perfect too. Anyway its wonderful, mysterious, a fairytale, a bedtime story... and now I want to own it so that I might read it whenever I like.

White as Snow

I have a tendancy to move from obsession to obsession when it comes to fairytales... Most recently it was The Princess & the Pea and for the longest time Beauty & the Beast was my fixation. Over the past weeks it has been Snow White. I find that these obsessions overtake me quite naturally. I will be sitting there and suddenly think "I must read Snow White". I think its because in some ingrained way these tales are part of my psyche and whenever I need a little help to work things out, the right tale for the job pops into my head.
If you analyse it, Snow White is about change and the steps we go through to reach maturity. I may be married with a house and kids, but I still need to enter that glass box now and again for some thinking time. We all do. 

I really love the above edition by Josephine Poole which I amazingly found in the charity shop around the corner from my house. Why do people give these things away? It was 35 pence.

I also love this edition by Berlie Doherty which I bought ages ago in 2004:

Just look how beautiful Snow White is in the illustration.

On peas and princesses...

I seem to move from obsession to obsession, especially when it comes to reading and fairytales... Whatever the tale, I read every version I can find, I buy the editions I can afford, I read the literary crit on the tale and then come up with my own interpretations too...
This month I have been obsessing over 'The Princess & the Pea'. Its certainly a very pretty tale. I say this because there is so much art work out there, like that above by E. Dulac, which has been inspired by it.

It is a very visual tale. It conjurs up strong images of soft versus hard, little versus big, rich versus poor, lies versus truth and not forgetting a very Royal Pea indeed.
I just love the idea of the tower of mattresses. I wish I could sleep on a bed like that. I also love the idea of the pea itself. Where does this come fom I wonder? I can find so little that attempts to explain any underlying meanings to this tale. Its joy comes from the fact that it is so simple and so short. Perhaps this is why there is so little written about it in response?

 

I have just finished reading Lauren Child's gorgeous photo art version of the tale. Its such a beautiful book. Oh and also I re-read The Pea and the Princess by Mini Grey, told from the perspective of the pea. ha! I remember reading this for the first time many moons ago when I worked in children's publishing. It made me laugh. It still does.

Beauty & the Pearl Earring

Last year I read a lot about fairy tales - the underlying meanings, the psychology, how the stories are now interwoven with our ideas and our society…I love fairy tales, but I also wanted to understand why they resonate so strongly with me. I was sure it was more than just nostalgia from childhood. 'The Uses of Enchantment (The Meaning & Importance of Fairy Tales)' by Bruno Bettelhelm is a fantastic book. It takes a psychological approach but is also literary criticism. In this book I found a lot of my answers…

My favourite fairy tale is 'Beauty & the Beast' and as it turns out this is one of the most 'grown up' fairy tales. Part of what is called the 'animal groom' series of fairy tales 'Beauty & the Beast' (and the other stories which also share this theme such as 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon') share 3 common themes.No one knows how and why the 'Beast' character has been changed into an animal. The character of Beast through this is also something of an enigma. A sorceress with more power than the other characters is responsible for changing Beast, but is not punished for her evil ways.It is always the Father that is the cause of the heroine or 'Beauty' leaving home to live with Beast. She leaves out of love and obedience to her Father.Essentially 'Beauty & the Beast' is about love. It is also about a girl becoming a woman through the forms of love she experiences.

A quick synopsis - Beauty's Father loves her and promises to bring her a rose back from his trip. He tries to pick a rose from a garden which belongs to Beast. Beast jumps out and threatens to kill Beauty's Father for stealing a rose. The only way he can save his life is if he sends his daughter to live with Beast as forfeit for his life (but Beauty must come willingly). Beauty loves her Father and goes to live with Beast willingly to save his life. Beauty is at first disgusted by Beast and misses her family but over time Beauty and Beast connect intellectually and emotionally and become accustomed to one another. Beast is not just a 'Beast' anymore. Beast allows Beauty to visit home when her Father is ill as long as she promises to return, or else Beast will die. At this point in the story a Mother or sisters usually try to convince Beauty not to go back but to stay with the family. However Beauty finds that she does want to return to Beast and that she loves him. She returns to find him dying but he is revived by her return and then transformed to his natural state as a man.

The story symbolises the process of to transferring love for the Father into love for a husband. The Father allows Beauty to join Beast to save him (the father is therefore acknowledging that he cannot protect her from adulthood and the outside world forever). She joins Beast out of love for her Father but in time the main object of her love is changed from Father to Beast – or future husband. There is also a sexual element (of course). This is why Beast is a Beast – as sex seems beastly out with true love. (It also has to be remembered that this tale was written when middle class women had their marriages 'arranged' and often did not really get to know the man they were marrying until after the marriage. The tales assume therefore that it is the woman who has to overcome her fear of sex.)

Now that I have explained a bit about 'Beauty & the Beast' perhaps my theories about the themes in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' will make more sense…AS Byatt wrote once that 'Mansfield Park' by Jane Austen was in a sense a rewriting of 'Cinderella'… I think that 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' by Tracy Chevalier is in a sense a rewriting of 'Beauty & the Beast'…Like 'Beauty & the Beast', 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is also about love. It is also about a girl becoming a woman through the forms of love she experiences.

Like 'Beauty & the Beast' and the other 'animal groom' stories, I see the story as having the 3 common themes.

1. The Beast character I feel is split in two – between Vermeer the painter and her suitor Pieter the Butcher's son. Vermeer is her master, a painter, quiet; he is something of an enigma to those around him. He connects intellectually with Griet and brings out this side of her. In many versions of 'Beauty & the Beast' too, the Beast encourages Beauty to read and to grow intellectually. Vermeer has power over Griet as he is her master. (Just as Beast effectively holds Beauty under his power.) She must also adjust to his ways by cleaning his studio in a certain way. Again there are parallels with the fairy tale – Beauty must adjust to Beast's unusual way of life.Pieter the Butcher is both attractive and disgusting at the same time to Griet. He is handsome yet always covered in blood from his butcher trade; it is on his apron, under his nails. The 'meat market' where he works is even, more loosely translated, as the 'beast market'(!) Pieter will be her husband by the end of the novel however there are parallels between her developing relationship with Vermeer and how her relationship (sexual and otherwise) progresses with Pieter. The two relationships are utterly tied.

2. There is no 'sorceress' in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' but there are several people who in turn have power over Vermeer and the way he behaves and works. Firstly his patron and secondly his mother in law Maria Thins.3. Griet is of course the Beauty character. She is forced to go into service as a maid due to her family's poverty. Her Father was a tile painter, now forced into retirement due to an accident which has left him blind. Therefore Griet must go to live with Vermeer because of her Father.Griet has a fear of another side of herself. Perhaps sex? She keeps her hair covered completely; she will let no one see it… (It is after Vermeer sees her hair while she is wrapping it in new cloth in order to be painted that she goes to find Pieter to make love for the first time.) The very fact that by the end of the book the painting is finished and in order for it to be complete Griet had to pierce her ear in order to insert the pearl earring, is very symbolic. The wearing of the pearl earring and all its symbolism is like Beauty's willing return to Beast. Griet dismissed from the household for wearing Vermeer's wife's earrings allows her to join Pieter to make a new and adult life. Beauty does the same with Beast after her return. Griet has more and more become part of her new life and has found a new self through that life. Like Beauty too…

If I had the time to make a proper study of this and to draw more comparisons, explain myself more fully… I would. There are many more parts to both stories… many more parallels. One day I may write it all down.

I adore both stories. Reading also keeps me sane.