tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1046067346902619614.post9206389550092047569..comments2024-03-27T12:47:38.949+00:00Comments on Middle Grade Strikes Back: Fairy Tales, Darkness & Diversity: ‘A Book of…’ by Ruth Manning-SandersBookZonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03218467691812670770noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1046067346902619614.post-57406927923927902342015-05-09T05:08:10.700+01:002015-05-09T05:08:10.700+01:00I love the works of Ruth Manning-Sanders. She'...I love the works of Ruth Manning-Sanders. She's my favorite author, actually, and I have become a little bit obsessive about researching her life and works. ... I'd love to do a proper biography of her someday, too. What a life she had. She traveled with England's circus caravans, she was a poet and novelist who was a contemporary of and worked with Virginia Woolf. ... And while she wove piskies and fairies and other fairy-tale creatures and allusions in and out of her poetry and novels all of her life, she amazingly did not publish her first true anthology of folk & fairy tales -- Peter and the Piskies -- until she was 72 YEARS OLD! That opened the spigot and for the final three decades of her life (she wrote until she was 102), she published about four dozen fairy-tale books. ... I have all of her "A Book Of..." titles (plus most of the others), and you are absolutely correct about what a wonderful writer she is. These aren't Disney tales. Her retellings of the core tales from so many different cultures have a wonderful "voice" to them. In fact, while I'm not sure if she was specifically writing tales to be read aloud, her works are even better when spoken. They have been re-collected in numerous storyteller and "tales to read aloud" type volumes. ... And as you also mentioned, she's not trying to bring anything new or cute to the tale. She tried to do them justice in the retelling, not sanitizing anything for a modern or younger audience. ... Here are a couple of quotes from her from the foreword of "A Choice of Magic"...<br /><br />"The fact is that the story is ages and ages old, and no one can now tell where it originated, or by what wandering folk it was carried about the world. But we do know that it was being told, in some form or other, long before any book was written; before, indeed, anyone could read or write. And this is true of all these old stories that we now call fairy tales." <br /><br />"But, alas, the stories are brought to a close. There can be no new fairy tales. They are records of the time when the world was very young; and never, in these latter days, can they, or anything like them, be told again. Should you try to invent a new fairy tale you will not succeed: the tale rings false, the magic is spurious. For the true world of magic is ringed with high, high walls that cannot be broken down. There is but one little door in the high walls which surround the world -- the little door of 'once upon a time and never again'.<br />"And so it must suffice that we can enter through that little door into the fairy world and take our choice of all its magic." <br /><br />I wish her books would be republished/reissued so they can be available to an even wider audience. I have tried contacting some of her past publishers to see if that could be a possibility, but haven't gotten very far. I'm sure the rights are quite complicated.<br /><br />If you are interested in learning more about Manning-Sanders, I've written 30+ posts about her on my blog, Papergreat, with more to come this summer. Here's the link: http://www.papergreat.com/search/label/Ruth%20Manning-Sanders<br /><br />All the best, and if you ever want to discuss more about Ruth Manning-Sanders, look me up any time.<br /><br />Chris Otto<br />York, Pennsylvania, USA<br />chrisottopa@gmail.comChris Ottohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17875854143718805298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1046067346902619614.post-30320835618807929662015-05-08T22:50:57.690+01:002015-05-08T22:50:57.690+01:00These sound familiar. I am fairly sure that most s...These sound familiar. I am fairly sure that most schools had at least some of them in their libraries at some stage. Those covers were by BRIAN FROUD? Wow! A gorgeous artist. Who would have thought it? But then, before he became famous, a certain "Johnny Williams" composed music for Lost In Space. :-)Sue Bursztynskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09362273418897882971noreply@blogger.com