Read, Listen, Watch
Staff Picks and Suggestions
Japanese Children’s Stories
I grew up with Japanese fairy tales because my dad grew up with Japanese fairy tales. It had nothing to do with being Japanese (we aren’t) and everything to do with the stories being magical (they are). My dad told me that when he had kids, he hunted through the bookstore for books from a specific publishing company – Tuttle Press – because the pink fabric cover and stylized illustrations were so familiar to him.
I recently found a 2003 copy of one of these Tuttle books in the Favat Children’s Section! This collection includes classics like Momotaro (Peach Boy) and the Grateful Jizo statues, as well as lesser known ones like the Bobtail Monkey and the Magic Teakettle. I even remember watching cartoons of stories like Urashimotaro in elementary school. What is always so interesting to me is how similar a lot of the fairy tales are to western fairy tales, as if they all came from the same place, fragmenting somewhere along the way, and adding a glass slipper here, a red rose there; a rice cake here, a persimmon there.
Access Latino Literature Free Online for Hispanic Heritage Month
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15 through October 15, Alexander Street Press is offering free access to select full-text, online collections for libraries. Explore poetry, short stories, folk tales, novels, memoirs, non-fiction, and plays in both Spanish and English from Latino writers around the world. Use the links below to browse titles; when prompted, enter username: eviews and password: hispanicheritage .
Enjoy, until mid-October!
Out with the old, in with the new (Vampire Edition)
It seems you can’t go anywhere without hearing about the Twilight saga. Or how about HBO’s True Blood series?
With the recent resurgence of vampires in popular culture, it’s easy to forget that this little slice of horror fiction was once a mainstay in the literary world (I know, Twilight fans, Stephanie Meyers’ books are literature… sort of). But I’m thinking more along the lines of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, even Salem’s Lot by Stephen King.
Yes, it seems that the classics have taken a back seat to their new, hipper counterparts. Recently, I came across Bram Stoker’s Dracula under the required reading list on a syllabus for one of my fall classes and couldn’t help but smile. But with the exception of a few of us stubborn readers, no one cares about those books anymore. So in this new age, what’s a classic book lover to do?
Absolutely nothing.
It sounds bleak, but the new fans to the genre don’t know anything about the books some of us can’t live without. However, that’s not a bad thing – they’re forging their own icons. And we can all appreciate the revival of the genre.
Perhaps it’s best to let the classic novels fade into obscurity. But it doesn’t hurt to pay homage every now and then; so the next time you stop by Snell, make sure to pick up one the classics – even if it’s just to skim the back cover. It’ll be good for you.
Ponyo
This summer I watched Ponyo, the latest cartoon from Japanese legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki. I’ve had a special place in my heart for his stuff ever since I saw Spirited Away (unsettling-but-amazing Alice In Wonderland-esque tale), whose weirdly compelling characters, creatures, and magical elements redefined fairy tales for me. Princess Mononoke (girl-Mowgli falls in love story), while edgier and a little less fantastical, only strengthened my interest in his work.
Ponyo is supposed to be a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, but the absolute freshness of Miyazaki’s interpretation makes it almost unrecognizable. True, there is a fish-creature (in Ponyo, it’s a goldfish daugher of a sorcerer and sea goddess, not a mermaid) that falls in love with a human and aspires to become human herself, but there are so many imaginative, unique – and sometimes, downright weird – elements added to it, that make it a completely new experience.
Ponyo, for example, looks more like a doll-duck creature than a goldfish at all and Ponyo’s little sister goldfish-things can transform into huge fish, an embodiment of the powerful waves themselves, that surge through the ocean, carrying Ponyo to her human boy’s house. Of course, since this is Miyazaki, the climactic scene takes place in a nursing home in a bubble under the sea, and there are prehistoric fish roaming the waters of the flooded seacliff village; confusing yes, but in the middle of these Miyazaki fantasies, they don’t seem that out of place.
It was definitely one of his more-cutesy, less-intense films, but still worth seeing. Check out more of Miyazaki’s films right here at Snell! I especially was excited to see Howl’s Moving Castle because I loved the novel of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones that the film was based on. You can also read about the master himself and his breathtaking work here and here.