delia
Unregistered User
(8/28/04 1:39 pm)
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Taken by Fairies
What a wonderful thread. I've been reading and reading, fascinated
with the similarities and the differences between your experiences
and mine. A reading parent was definately a similarity. My father
was the one who read to me when I was very little, in the night
watches of asthma before the medication that make life so easy now.
Our favorite was Howard Pyle's Robin
Hood, which led me (once I figured out I could read to myself
just as easily as he could read to me) to The
Wonder Clock and Tanglewood
Tales and all his wonderful illustrations of maidens with voluminous
gowns and even more voluminous hair, none of whom were beautiful
by the 1950's standards I hated. Then there was Fairy
Tales From Many Lands, which had a bunch of really unusual tales
in it, including "The Snow Child," the first story I'd
ever read about being adopted. That book remains (what's left of
it, held together with flowered Contact paper) my hands-down favorite
fairytale book, the book I still return to when in need of inspiration
and solace. Shirley Temple's Storybook Hour and Andrew
Lang and Myths
Every Child Should Know and Fractured
Fairytales came in their due time and place and had their effect,
of course.
All of which--especially Howard Pyle--probably explains a good deal about my aesthetics and my general feeling that fairy tale is the basis of all emotionally successful fiction--for me, anyway.
Delia
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