Lolita Charm: Once Upon a Time: Recommended Reading

Monday, August 16, 2010

Once Upon a Time: Recommended Reading

One of my favorite things to do, especially in Seattle, is to visit secondhand bookshops. There seem to be so many here and I find some beautiful things to take home! I've always loved fairytales since I was a child, and have huge anthologies of them from cultures all over the world. Today I purchased a thick book of Russian fairytales. One of the stories is called Danilo the Luckless, and while it has an unhappy ending, it feeds me with just the kind of fanciful words I love to read about:

"I want the lovely Swan Maiden to stand before me, and through her feathers let her body be seen, and through her body let her bones be seen, and through her bones let it be seen how from bone to bone the marrow flows, like pearls poured from one vessel to another."

~Danilo the Luckless, Russian Fairytales, collected by Aleksandr Afanas'ev

That's the kind of line that makes me want to dress all in white as a lolita swan maiden, or at the very least, put on my pretty burgundy Swan Lake skirt from Metamorphose. It reminds me so much of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and even the cute anime of a swan/duck ballerina, Princess Tutu! Stories like that just make me swoon, sometimes to the point of trying to write my own - or just to dress up and flutter around fields of flowers.

Here's my list of favorite fairytales to look for when I'm out:

(Snow-White and Rose-Red meet the Bear Prince in the Blue Fairy Book)

The Andrew Lang Fairytale books: These are Victorian fairytales compiled from many cultures by Andrew Lang, starting with the original Blue Fairy book published in 1889. There are twelve in all of various colors, and I'm always out to find the ones I don't have. The stories varying, including Japanese and Arabian tales, with - my favorite part - beautiful illustrations. On this page there are links to read the entire Blue Fairy Book online, but I love having them to bring with me, especially on dull days when even their covers are a welcome pop. My mother gave me her copy of the Blue Fairy Book and since then I'll never lose my soft spot for Prince Hyacinth, Princess Mignonette, and the little white cat, Blanchette. Like all fairytales, they have many of the same components mixed up a little different, but its their delicate voice and drawings which really make them the perfect lolita fairytale.

"They found her lying on the floor with poison in her veins and the apples spilled where they had rolled. She was the green color of certain white flowers."

~The Rose and the Beast, Snow

Francesca Lia Block: The Rose and the Beast (and anything else written by her, really): Francesca has the gift for making fairytales out of our modern world. The Rose and the Beast is a perfect example of this - her retellings of fairytales are more like spoken poetry performances which leave us guessing if this is the tenth kingdom or the strange deserts and urbans of Los Angeles. Her stories are eerie, mature, and reflect some of the real wolves girls face in the forest, like drug use and sexual assault. Her writing has a graceful, heartbeat of a flow, and brings you to a place where you are not dreaming and not awake.

(The Little Mermaid and the Prince, by Hans Christian Anderson, illustration by Edmund Dulac)

Hans Christian Anderson: I never was really entranced with the Grimm brothers' fairytales, and perhaps only mildly tempted by the works of Perrault, the French fairytale writer. If I had to name a favorite author of fairytales, it would be Hans Christian Anderson. He wrote children's stories just when people began writing children's stories - before then, books for children were either morally instructive or non-existent. He wrote many of our most popular stories, including The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, the Snow Queen, the Steadfast Tin Soldier, and even the Ugly Duckling and the Emperor's New Clothes. A statue of the Little Mermaid has been erected in Copenhagen harbor in his honor, where he spent a good deal of his life.

Tatsinda: Tatsinda is an odd little fantasy book I read as a child and had all but forgotten until I ran across a copy at one of my favorite secondhand bookshops. While the story has a very mountain-people, Lapland feel to it, it's also very elvish and distinctly part of its own world. Although it's described for younger readers, the imagery in the book is worth it. Tatsinda lives in a world of colored crystal houses and unusual animals, where she is different for not being blue-eyed and silver-haired like the rest. I remember having a very 70s style, Last Unicorn illustrated type, but can't seem to find another copy like it.

The Serendipity Series: These books were produced in the 1970s as short and moralistic, hoping to teach kids tolerance and acceptance, as well as basic kindness and even environmental care. Many featured recurring characters like Morgan the Unicorn, or Leo the Lop (-eared bunny). The artwork is adorable with lush, forested scenery and shows all kinds of creatures from butterfly-winged ponies even to one girl, who may be a dewdrop or a pauper or a princess (in her own words). I loved these as a child and still have a few left, where they are preserved carefully on my bookshelf. Every so often I pull them down and reread their simple but still relevant messages.

Shadow Castle: In this short collection of stories by Marian Cockrell, Lucy is a little girl living on the mountainside and one day stumbles into fairyland, where she meets a man named Michael - who tells her wonderful stories of a fairy family, which seem strangely connected the personless, moving shadows inside the castle rooms. Again with darling illustrations and stories about goblin attacks, Princess Bluebell, and a wise dragon, not to mention true, infatuously silly young love.

Next time you're at your local library, secondhand bookshop, or even in your own bedroom, plop down among the stacks and thumb through their fairytale section. To me, there's nothing more inspiring that unusual or Victorian fairytales, read quietly in golden sunlight and lacey, feminine skirts and petticoats. Choose your own favorites as outfit inspirations, or just to daydream about. What are some of your favorite oft-unheard-of fairy stories?

Labels: lifestyle, lolita living, recommended reading

11 Comments:

At August 17, 2010 at 8:02 AM , Anonymous said...: I absolutely love the french fairytale by Charles Perrault "Donkeyskin". Many anthologies find it inappropriat and, thus, don't include it, but I love it so much :)

I have to suggest for you to read Robin McKinley's retellings. I'm currently reading her version of La Belle et La Bete. It's magnificent!

<3
Raelynn
At August 17, 2010 at 8:09 AM , Tabitha said...: my favorite is George MacDonald's "The Golden Key" ... I mean a girl named Tangle? An owl-fish? Yes please! :)
At August 17, 2010 at 9:34 AM , Kelly said...: I am so glad you mentioned Francesca Lia Block's books. The Weetzie Bat books have been a personal savior for me, but I think my very favorite book is her I Was A Teenage Fairy.
At August 17, 2010 at 10:49 AM , Anonymous said...: Ah! Someone wrote about Donkeyskin already! I've always loved this.
I'm Bulgarian and we have a very distinct (often odd, even in my opinion) folklore and some of the fairy tales are really pretty. We have a mythical creature called samodiva which is a bit like a nymph, in some stories they are good, in some - evil, and they have different abilities in almost every single story and their descriptions and illustrations are incredibly eerie and magical! I think they're actually the veelas in the Harry Potter series that were the mascots for the Bulgarian quidditch team...
I've tried searching for Bulgarian tales online, but I really can't find anything. Just a warning though, some of them are a bit dark (for example, in 'The Three Brothers And The Golden Apple' which is a classic in our folklore, the eagle which carries the main character asks him to bring meat with him on the long flight and when the meat is over, he starts cutting pieces off his feet to feed the eagle. I found it a sign of generousity when I was little, but now it kind of creeps me out, haha)...
At August 17, 2010 at 12:35 PM , kyuubified said...: I don't know if this quite fits the category but... I recommend anything by Junko Mizuno, specifically her re-imagined fairy tales (Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Princess Mermaid). Everything is drawn so cute and adorable, but with a very obvious sinister and dark edge too.
At August 17, 2010 at 1:34 PM , Yajaira said...: FLB, she is my favorite writer, her work is my dreams put into reality.
I would love to recommend Jane Austen for the list to and a cute little book called Penhaligon's Scented Treasury of Verse and Prose The language of the Flowers... a non fiction with excerpts from verse and prose and beautiful full color victorian pictures. It is fun and I think a good find for the Lifestyle Loli
At August 17, 2010 at 3:45 PM , DuskRose_Dreaming said...: Tatsinda sounds very intriguing (and charming)! I'll have to look for it. As for fairytales, two of my own favorites are The Last Unicorn, and The Little White Horse (in the latter, a young girl moves to a picturesque valley that hides quite a few mysteries and even magic--or at least there's a magic sort of air to it).
At August 17, 2010 at 4:12 PM , Mykki said...: Thanks for the recommendations. I'll have to check them out!
At August 17, 2010 at 5:30 PM , Holocaust Journal said...: Wow. I have never heard of anyone else who knows of Tatsinda! I used to check it out from my school's library as a child, only bringing it in on the last day before it had to be returned- and then re-new it! I would keep it the entire year. XD Then I lost it somewhere and didn't read it for years, and when I did, it was horribly disappointing.
At August 18, 2010 at 4:50 AM , Lavender and Twill said...: I adore The Serendipity Series ~ we only had one of their books when I was a child {the one with Leo the Lop} but I always thought the illustrations were gorgeous. And my sisters and I always quote the possum ~ "Whatcha doin' that for?"

I really want to see if I can find those books now!

xox,
b. of Depict This!
At August 19, 2010 at 4:51 PM , Amy said...: Oooohhh thanks for the suggestions, I LOVE fairytales. I almost brought the big bound collections we had at home with me to college, and was sad when I found out my mom got rid of them! I had a Serendipity book, too, called Fanny (http://amzn.to/c5bOgL) - it was so pretty and made me cry!

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Lolita Charm

Monday, August 16, 2010

Once Upon a Time: Recommended Reading

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