This is Ruth Plumly Thompson. She was chosen to continue L. Frank Baum’s Oz series after his death. I believe she wrote 18 Oz books in the 1920s and 1930s, and a very fine job she did. She carried on with great imagination, plots, characters, humor, and wordplay. She also loved adverbs. Adverbs positively preened […]
From 1900 to 1920 there was no educational television. In fact, there was no television at all. Therefore, instead of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books delighted and gently taught the best aspects of humanity to the children of the early 20th century, for he was a wonderful storyteller gifted […]
I recently reread Alice (‘s Adventures in Wonderland) and Alice (Through the Looking-Glass) and noticed two very different approaches to the structure of the narratives. On the one hand, Alice (‘s Adventures in Wonderland) began as a story made up by Charles Dodgson to entertain the three Liddell sisters while they rowed the river on […]
Here is a picture of a reproduction of a page in a story illustrated and written by the hand of Reverend Charles Dodgson as a Christmas present for Alice Liddell. Alice had insisted that he write down this particular story, the one about another Alice and the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit and […]
Sometimes I jump up and down shouting, “Rice!” It frightens the birds and scatters the mice. Why do I do this? I know it’s not nice. Oh well, time to stand on my head screaming, “Ice!”
The Reverend Dodgson’s introduction to his Hiawatha satire, with the matching of the metre used by Henry in his poem, in his long Longfellow poem: In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practised writer, with the […]
Often there is more than one version of a folk tale or a fairy tale. Let’s have a look at Little Red Riding-Hood, for instance. In the version found in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, bottom row up there, third from the right, the final sentence of the story, coming directly on the heels of […]
This edition of Andrew Lang’s Violet Fairy Tale Book is illustrated by Robert Venables. The cover illustration is for the Serbian folk tale, ‘The Finest Liar in the World’. Why is the lad riding the giant chicken chasing the giant bee the finest liar in the world? Because he states, among other things: 1. ‘In […]
Hans Christian Andersen wrote quite a good long fairy tale and called it The Snow Queen. Andrew Lang included a version of it in his Pink Fairy Book. The story begins in the Pink Fairy Book as follows: There was once a dreadfully wicked hobgoblin. One day he was in capital spirits because he had […]
Speaking of giants and beanstalks, in Walt Disney’s version of the story, Willie the Giant does not growl terribly: ‘Fe, fi, fa-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.’ No. He sings instead: ‘Fe, fi, fo, fum, He, hi, ho, […]
