#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/01/03 -- For Readers Who Never Grew Up! :)

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 3, No. 10: January 3, 2024

 

 

For Readers Who Never Grew Up:

Faery Tales for the Young and the Young at Heart

 

Dedication

                This Happy New Year edition of Winged Words Windsday is dedicated to all my friends at the Center for Children’s Books at the University of Illinois. Please visit them @ https://ccb.ischool.illinois.edu to learn more about their programs and publications highlighting the best new literature for children and young adults.

 

“Picture-Books in Winter”

(Excerpted from A Child’s Garden of Verses)

By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

 

Summer fading, winter comes —

Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,

Window robins, winter rooks,

And the picture story-books.

 

Water now is turned to stone

Nurse and I can walk upon;

Still we find the flowing brooks

In the picture story-books.

 

All the pretty things put by,

Wait upon the children’s eye,

Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,

In the picture story-books.

 

We may see how all things are

Seas and cities, near and far,

And the flying faeries’ looks,

In the picture story-books.

 

How am I to sing your praise,

Happy chimney-corner days,

Sitting safe in nursery nooks,

Reading picture story-books?

 

Editor’s Note

                The Editor has a confession to make: I’ve never outgrown children’s literature. I’ve enjoyed it ever since I was a child, and I still enjoy reading children’s books to this very day, either to myself or to my 85-year-old mother, who also enjoys them immensely, as she is still among the young at heart.

                This week, we celebrate the enchanted world of children’s literature, which is still open for business, no matter how old you may be.

 

This photo of Hans Christian Andersen, the world-famous author of Danish literary faery tales, was taken in 1869. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“The Faery Book”

By Norman Gale (1862-1942)

 

In summer, when the grass is thick,

If Mother has the time,

She shows me with her pencil

How a poet makes a rhyme,

And often she is sweet enough

To choose a leafy nook,

Where I cuddle up so closely

When she reads the Faery-book.

 

In winter when the corn’s asleep,

And birds are not in song.

And crocuses and violets

Have been away too long,

Dear Mother puts her thimble by

In answer to my look,

And I cuddle up so closely

When she reads the Faery-book.

 

And Mother tells the servants

That of course they must contrive

To manage all the household things

From four till half-past five,

For we really cannot suffer

Interruption from the cook,

When we cuddle close together

With the happy Faery-book.

 

“The Enchanted World of Classic Stories”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Expanded from Cursus Honorum VII: 6 (January 2007)

                Long before the advent of television, radio, movies, and the Internet, storytelling provided our agrarian forebears with endless hours of edutainment. The myths, legends, and folktales transmitted by storytellers and collected by scholars demonstrate how our ancestors viewed their relationship with the natural world and with the invisible powers that were believed to dwell within and beyond it.

                Our pre-industrial ancestors’ worldview was built upon the foundation of shared stories that defined the nature of their common life together. Classic tales were handed down from one generation to the next because they conveyed important life lessons in engaging and memorable ways. Adults who spent their earliest years listening to spellbinding tales being recited from memory or read aloud from a storybook passed on their favorite stories to their children – along with the values and lessons that the stories contained.

                The following anthologies of classic tales, available in several printed editions and on the Internet, can provide us with the keys to an enchanted realm where the magic of the storyteller’s art can enthrall us for hours on end in the theater of the mind!

 

·         The Fables of Aesop (ca. 620-564 BCE) are world-renowned for the wise and witty ways in which their anthropomorphic animal characters portray timeless lessons about the human condition and how to live out those lessons in everyday life. Aesop himself had been born into enslavement in ancient Greece but won his freedom and went on to become the most famous storyteller of Classical antiquity. Over 300 fables are attributed to him, and his tales are still read and enjoyed by audiences of all ages around the world.

·         The Panchatantra, compiled by the Indian sage Vishnu Sharma (fl. ca. 200 BCE), is a vast collection of traditional animal tales from ancient India. It was designed to educate young royals on the principles of ethical leadership, and over the past two millennia, it has become the most translated literary work from the Indian subcontinent. The perennially popular tales of the Panchatantra have had an enduring impact on literary traditions throughout the world!

·         The Arabian Nights: Collected over a timespan of several centuries, beginning at the royal court of the learned Caliph Harun Al-Rashid (763-809) in Baghdad, these stories include such rollicking adventures as Aladdin, Sindbad the Sailor, Ali Baba, and many others. Although these 1001 tales were compiled in the Arabic language, they have a truly international flavor, having originated in such diverse places as China, India, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Egypt.

·         The Shahnameh, an epic poem composed by the master poet Ferdowsi (940-1025 CE), is a versified chronicle of the Persian kings from prehistory to the 7^th century CE. Mixing elements of history and legend, it is THE national epic of the Persian people and a masterpiece of world literature. Filled with heroic kings, fantastic beasts, and amazing adventures, the book is available in both condensed and unabridged formats, and it remains an enduring monument to the great civilization of ancient Persia that its author cherished and preserved within its pages.

·         The Grimms’ Faery Tales: Collected by the scholarly German brothers Jakob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm, this anthology showcases the traditional household tales of the German-speaking peoples of Central Europe. Many of our most familiar children’s stories (e.g., The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, etc.) first found their way into print through the Grimms’ anthology. However, the original tales are far more colorful than the versions adapted for children!

·         Bulfinch’s Mythology: Compiled by Thomas Bulfinch, a Bostonian classicist (1796-1867), this is the ultimate anthology of timeless tales from ancient and medieval times. His monumental compendium is sometimes divided into three separate volumes: (I) The Age of Fable, (II) The Age of Chivalry, and (III) Legends of Charlemagne. Each of Bulfinch’s lively retellings is drawn from authentic original source material.

·         Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) created marvelous tales from his own imagination that conveyed his profound insights into the human condition. All of Andersen’s stories are worthwhile reading, both the well-known (e.g., The Ugly Duckling) and ones that are sometimes overlooked (e.g., The Snow Queen).

·         George MacDonald (1824-1905) is the Editor’s favorite author of literary faery tales. His masterpieces include Phantastes (1858), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), and Lilith (1895). All of his faery tales, written both for the young and the young at heart, invite readers to appreciate the hidden wonders all around us that we encounter on life’s journey.

·         The Faery Books of Many Colors are anthologies of classic tales from around the world and across the centuries. They were compiled, edited, and published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang (1844-1912) and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang (1851-1933). These multicultural stories, drawn from myths, legends, folktales, histories, and biographies, are a collective treasure-trove of storytelling that can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

·         Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), best known for her tales of Peter Rabbit and his animal friends, was also a farmer, sheep breeder, mycologist, conservationist, and illustrator. The Editor learned the top-secret moral of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) when it was read to him at an early age – namely, that eating too many green vegetables can be hazardous to your health!

 

Here is an illustrated page of the Panchatantra from an 18^th-century manuscript. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Elfin”

By Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914)

 

When wildflower blue and wildflower white

The wildflowers lay their heads together,

And the moon-moth glimmers along the night,

And the wandering firefly flares its light,

And the full Moon rises broad and bright,

Then, then it is elfin weather.

 

And fern and flower on top of the hill

Are a faery wood where the faeries camp;

And there, to the pipe of the cricket shrill,

And the owl's bassoon or the whippoorwill,

They whirl their wildest and trip their fill

By the light of the glowworm's lamp.

 

And the green tree-toad and the katydid

Are the henchmen set to guard their dance;

At whose cry they creep 'neath the dewy lid

Of a violet's eye, or close lie hid

In a bluebell's ear, if a mortal 'mid

The moonlit woods should chance.

 

And the forest-fly with its gossamer wings,

And filmy body of rainbow dye,

Is the ouphen steed each elfin brings,

Whereon by the light of the stars he swings,

When the dance is done and the barn-cock sings,

And the dim dawn streaks the sky.

 

“The Faery Book”

By Abbie Farwell Brown (1871-1927)

 

When Mother takes the Faery Book

And we curl up to hear,

'Tis "All aboard for Faeryland!"

Which seems to be so near.

 

For soon we reach the pleasant place

Of Once Upon a Time,

Where birdies sing the hour of day,

And flowers talk in rhyme;

 

Where Bobby is a velvet Prince,

And where I am a Queen;

Where one can talk with animals,

And walk about unseen;

 

Where Little People live in nuts,

And ride on butterflies,

And wonders kindly come to pass

Before your very eyes;

 

Where candy grows on every bush,

And playthings on the trees,

And visitors pick basketfuls

As often as they please.

 

It is the nicest time of day --

Though Bedtime is so near, --

When Mother takes the Faery Book

And we curl up to hear.