“Fee! Fie! Foh! Fum!” – English Fairy Tales
~~~ “Fee! Fie! Foh! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he living or be he dead I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.” My father loved to bellow this speech, a self-dramatising performance of a giant or ogre warning his cowering victims, intimidating them. A huge, lumbering, self-satisfied threat of a […]
Well-Loved Tales
My interest in folk tales began, I think, with the Well-loved Tales series published by Ladybird in the late 1960s. A number of these pocket-sized books were to be found knocking around the house when I was growing up, bought for my elder sister, if not for me. I remember the covers. Neither iconic nor […]
The Road Not Taken: Neil Gaiman’s ‘Coraline’
‘Coraline’ is one of Neil Gaiman’s best-loved works. It’s a cracking read, tense and atmospheric, with nicely constructed suspense sequences and clever doubling between the two worlds. Gaiman imbues the material with warmth and humour and the action brims with ideas from the whimsical to the disturbing – I confess I was puzzled by the […]
Stories I would like to have written, #1
‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Hans Christian Andersen You may not have read ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, but you will likely be familiar with its key elements: the emperor who believes he is wearing the robes made of the finest materials, so fine it cannot be seen by the stupid, and the ministers unable or […]
Tomi Ungerer: The Three Robbers
Three robbers terrorize the countryside, plundering unfortunate travellers, until one night they discover an orphan being taken to live with her wicked aunt. They abduct the girl, make her a soft bed in a corner of their cave, among their caskets of gold and jewels. The next morning the girl asks them what their treasure […]
Shockheaded Peter
Nine of the ten stories in Dr Heinrich Hoffman’s seminal picture book are what you would call cautionary tales. Misbehaving or disobedient kids get their comeuppance: some consequences are rather lenient – the boy who walks around with his head in the clouds gets rescued from the river and loses only his writing book; some […]