illustrators · 21. August 2019

Sarah Noble Ives was christened as Sarah Maria Ives but most often signed her work just as Noble Ives. Many female artists did that in times where the mere gender of the artist may drastically reduce the possibilities of earning in the rough and competitive world of creatives. Her initial education came at home, at the schoolhouse on Grosse Ille, from Port Huron High School and Edna Chafee Noble's Training School (from Ms. Noble Sarah's 'middle' pen-name came from). She showed artistic...

fairy tales · 26. July 2019

Red Riding Hood is extremely popular fairy tale, known in numerous versions and offering countless interpretations.

illustrators · 12. June 2019

This legendary illustrator, often using only by initials of his first names (W. W. Denslow) is best known as the original illustrator of The Wizard of Oz (or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). He actually illustrated only the first book and made a design for the stage production but got into conflict with his friend and author Frank Baum about splitting the profits (as it pans out, there was no profit in the first stage version) and John R. Neill took over the illustrative part of the series. Denslow...

fairy tales · 02. June 2019

Goldilocks is pretty simple story about a girl who enters the house of the bears, eats their food and uses their furniture before they find her and she escapes. But its history and the variations of the story are surprisingly rich.

writers · 12. May 2019

Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a poet, a writer, and a thinker from the 17th century, from times of Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King. He excelled at many professions and he was one of the most respected men of his times but history will probably remember him mostly by only one of his numerous works: book of fairy tales now famous only by its subtitle: Tales of mother Goose. This book had only eight fairy tales, but among them are some which became classics and are still popular among kids...

fairy tales · 27. April 2019

The fairy tale Snow White from the collection by Brothers Grimm is for sure one of the best known stories in the whole world. As far as I know it is pretty new and in my opinion some sort of hybrid made from several other classic fairy tales. It posses characteristics of The Sleeping Beauty (conflict with a jealous witch, long sleep, similar to death), Cinderella (absent and incompetent father who married a wrong woman), Wolf and Seven kids (magic number seven, dependence from the outside...

writers · 21. April 2019

Why is Hans Christian Andersen (sometimes misspelled Hans Christian Anderson) so special name in the world of children literature? Why most of the literary critics believe he is the biggest fairy tale writer ever? O.k., he wrote a couple of big hits like The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling…), but we can find at least ten other great authors from the same field and without their own World Day. Let me provide some speculations!

fairy tales · 07. April 2019

Three little pigs is a story about taking responsibilities and growing up. It's full of symbolism, especially everything related to magic number three.

fairy tales · 28. February 2019

What are the benefits of reading, you may ask? Well, in this blog we are dealing with fairy tales, but most of the kids know fairy tales only from television or cinema, not from books. There's a chance they were introduced to some fairy tale characters for the first time in computer games! Yet we should not diminish the importance of books. They have some old fashioned feel and they are certainly not attractive as video versions with tons of special effects. But books have some great advantages...

fairy tales · 18. February 2019

The Goose Girl is a well-known fairy tale written by brothers Grimm with a lot of variations. The story starts with princes who left her home with a maiden. On the way to another kingdom, the maiden forces the princess to switch positions. Thus the real princess comes to the castle of her future husband in the role of a servant. When they reach their destination the maiden introduces herself as a princess and arranges the real princess becomes a goose girl. The prince doesn't notice anything,...