Saturday, July 18, 2015

Disney Live Action List Adds Aladdin Prequel "Genies"

This news is not at all surprising but I am wondering exactly how long they're going to push this retread trend.

From ComingSoon:
The project, currently titled Genies, is designed to serve as an origin story of sorts for the djinn famously voiced by the late Robin Williams in Disney’s 1992 feature film version of the classic Arabian tale.
According to the outlet, the film will explore the “realm of the Genies” and explain how one became trapped inside the iconic lamp. The long term hope, then, is for Genies to develop as a franchise and pave the way for a live-action retelling of Aladdin itself.

From The Hollywood Reporter:
The studio is developing Genies, a live-action comedy adventure that is being written by Damian Shannon andMark SwiftTripp Vinson is on board to produce via his Vinson Films banner. 
Aladdin is a centuries-old Arabic folk tale that got the animated Disney treatment in 1992 in a film featuring Robin Williams as the voice of the blue-skinned Genie. 
The movie tells the story of Aladdin, a street urchin who finds a lamp that unleashes a Genie who grants him three wishes. A love interest and a sorcerer also figure into the proceedings. 
The new project would focus on the realm of the Genies and reveal how Aladdin's Genie ended up enslaved in the lamp.
So, did you get that? "Genies" is a prequel live action comedy film prequel, which, if is successful will pave the way for a live-action remake of the original 1992 animated film Aladdin. (So, they're sort of hinting at, at least two Aladdin related projects here!)

Wow. Talk about stretching the franchise.  If there's one property that might stretch enough to work with this plan, though, it's probably this one, IF they get the cultural emphasis and portrayal correct (that's a big "if"), no matter whether they go with (old world) Arabian, Arabic or Chinese characters, or a combination.

For a little behind the scenes history of Aladdin, have a read of Tales of Faerie's post from a a couple of years ago HERE.

Friday, July 17, 2015

BalletLorent Teams Up Again with Carol Ann Duffy & Doctor Who Composer to Create a New "Snow White"

Details are a little sketchy but here's the overview, care of TheLowry:
balletLORENT's dark and mystical adaptation of Snow White is created from an original retelling by Carol Ann Duffy, and reimagines the story of a mother’s poisonous jealousy in a dance theatre production for family audiences. Thwarted desire, deception, compassion and redemption with magical mirrors, and a young woman with beauty as pure as feathered snow. 
Snow White is the second chapter of a planned trilogy of Brothers Grimm fairytales created by balletLORENT, which began with the highly acclaimed Rapunzel (Performance of the Year, The Journal Culture Awards 2012).
There's also a great Kickstarter happening in conjunction with the project, called the Snow White Young Cast project.
Giving children with little to no access to the arts the opportunity to be part of a professional dance production. 
Snow White, the second in dance theatre company balletLORENT’s planned trilogy of fairytales, will see the company’s professional dancers joined by a young cast of children aged between 6 – 8 years old and unique to each middle-large scale theatre that Snow White tours to. We are raising money through Kickstarter to be able to widen our reach to children with natural talent but little access to dance and the arts. 
Our young casts will rehearse and perform with our professional dancers, giving them the valuable experience of working with a professional dance company. We ran a similar model alongside our last fairytale, Rapunzel – but this time, our main aim is to engage with more children who have had little to no access to the arts, or previous dance experience.

You can read more about the 'young cast' project HERE.

And you can see another Snow White workshop video with different groups of children HERE as well.

Sounds intriguing, no? From what I can gather, it appears this production is set to premiere in October this year (2015), in Newcastle, UK.

I have to look up Duffy's poetry again, but especially her newer release for children in late 2014, to get more of an idea of where they're headed with this. The one promotional photo available from the production (in two variations) is quite intriguing...
I think there's a good chance the story will be based off her work in this book, however, published late last year, with illustrations by the amazing Tomislav Tomic. I have included the cover of Duffy's gorgeous looking book, and Tomic's two Snow White illustrations below:
"Disappear to faraway lands of wicked witches, evil monsters and brave heroines in Carol Ann Duffy’s stunning collection of Faery Tales, beautiful illustrated by Tomislav Tomic. This gift set collection of stories is a published just in time for Christmas, by Faber and Faber. Tomislav has created ethereal images of the Poet Laureate’s interpretations of classic stories such as Hansel and GretelSnow White and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. He also designed and hand rendered the illuminated letters throughout the book as well as the title for the cover."
Now if I could just get a hold of the actual book..!

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Beware of Playwright With Axe to G̶r̶i̶n̶d̶, er, Wield

Douglas Gordon with taxidermied wolf
I barely know how to title this news, or how to comment. This reaction by the writer/director/actor of Neck of the Woods (loosely based on Red Riding Hood), says so many things, none of which qualifies as an "artistic statement" (though it's clear he wishes it was taken as such).

From ArtNetNews:
After critics axed Douglas Gordon's play, "Neck of the woods," the 1996 Turner-Prize winning artist took an axe, literally, to the newly-opened theater complex in Manchester where the play was staged, taking out a chunk of wall. He then drew what appears to be a claw around the damaged part—and signed it... 
The play—which premiered last weekend as part of the Manchester International Festival (MIF)—is conceived as a re-telling Little Red Riding Hood, and designed to be as frightening to adults as the original story is to children. Little Red Riding Hood is saved from the belly of a wolf by a woodcutter, so the show features several axes. The axe used for the attack is believed to be a stage prop. 
...But the critics weren't impressed. The Daily Telegraph said the play had "the unmistakable whiff of a vanity project,"... 
Meanwhile, the Guardian described it as a "humourless and sedate Red Riding Hood retelling" that "takes itself very seriously" and is "so old-fashioned you wonder if Gordon has any familiarity at all with contemporary theater."

So it didn't turn out as expected. (There's a post, on what seemed to be a promising play, HERE.) That happens all the time. People - and plays - get bad reviews all the time, and, yes, it's tough, but it's part of the business. If this was for publicity, it was a very expensive, largely ineffective stunt, which adds up to bad business all round.

(So tempting to talk about the "imitation" of life here, what with taxidermied wolves in the mix too...)

I'm disappointed that someone who apparently immersed themselves so fully into the Red Riding Hood fairy tale as well as peeling back the dark nature of man and the true nature of wolf, would resort to such a thing. Apart from anything else, it's not very creative and really just says "tantrum".

Beware indeed.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Victo Ngai's Gorgeous Illustrations for Folio Society's "Chinese Fairy Tales & Fantasies"

I'm not sure why this is coming up in searches as it's been out for a while now, but I've seen more than one mention of the Folio Society's beautiful edition of Chinese Fairy Tales & Fantasies recently.

Since it is still fairly new (mid 2014 release) and there are probably a bunch of you who haven't seen Victo Ngai's stunning work, I thought I'd share some of the illustrations. (She's a fairly prolific artist and quite generous in sharing her process and sketches around social media so do a search and you should find her easily. I suggest starting with her Tumblr HERE.By the way,"Victo", is short for Victoria - a British colonization leftover nickname in Hong Kong.)

From the Epoch Times:
In the volume are eight full-color illustrations by Hong Kong artist Victo Ngai, whose delicate lines and otherwise concise figures are accentuated by her powerful use of color and contrast—the result is a welcome sense of dreamlike, otherworldly fascination.      
Contrasting abruptly with the visions encountered in the legends and fables is the preface, written by award-winning writer Yiyun Li. Raised in Beijing, her words, reflecting the contemporary materialism of the Chinese regime’s Marxist education, express a sort of uncanny bewilderment at the deep spiritual and mystical nature of the legends and folktales. What results is a clash of two identities: one Marxist, empirical, official; the other Chinese, cyclical, traditional.

This edition from the Folio Society (which you can find HERE) currently retails for about $75.00 - not cheap! The volume is designed to be a treasure for a lifetime bookshelf though, and I wouldn't say no to owning one (who am I kidding, I'd pretty much say "yes" to Folio version of almost anything but any fairy tale volumes - "yes please!")


I definitely recommend going to the Folio link and reading the introduction by Moss Roberts - fascinating stuff! It gives a wonderful summary of the uniqueness of Chinese fairy tales and why there is a proliferation of ghosts in their tales, as well as the types of tales that are common (as opposed to different emphasis in other cultures). It also explains why Chinese fairy tales tend to 'resolve' the way they do. As I said, fascinating stuff!

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

"The Wild Girl" by Kate Forsyth GIVEAWAY! (Entry details)

"The Brothers Grimm left one tale untold..."

Once upon a time there were six sisters.
The pretty one, the musical one, the clever one, the helpful one, the young one... 
And then there was the Wild one.

Dortchen Wild has loved Wilhelm Grimm since she as a young girl. Under the forbidding shadow of her father and the tyranny of Napoleon's army, the pair meet secretly to piece together a magical fairy tale collection.

The story behind the stories of the Brothers Grimm.

Thanks to the lovely folks at St. Martin's Press, we're having a GIVEAWAY! 

There's been a lot of buzz over the US release of Kate Forsyth's book The Wild Girl, including here at Once Upon A Blog. We've been treated to a wonderful review HERE and most especially an exclusive 'Behind the Pages' interview with author Kate Forsyth herself HERE (complete with photos from her notebooks!).

To enter the giveaway all you have to do is help spread the word about Kate Forsyth's new (US edition) book in some way via any form of social media:

1. Link to the interview or the review or this giveaway post via some form of social media. You can use:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Any other social media platform!

2. Make sure your post is public so it can be verified as a valid entry. (This is especially important to double check if you're using Facebook. We had a number of entries in our last giveaway that couldn't be verified because we couldn't see them.)

3. Put the link, along with your name (especially important if you usually comment anonymously), in the comment section of this post at Once Upon A Blog.

4. Do this as many times as you wish BEFORE MIDNIGHT CA time on Friday July 31st, 2015 (ONE entry per social media platform per day please - we don't want to spam people!)

5. Check back on Saturday August 1st at the end of the day to see who the lucky winner is, which will be announced, once our elves have finished verifying all the entries!

I will be placing a pinned post with a link to these instructions at the top of the blog shortly, to stay until the deadline for your easy reference.

Have fun and good luck!

"The Wild Girl" - Review by Christie Pang

"The Wild Girl"

by Kate Forsyth

Review by Christie Pang
Editor's Note: Here is Christie's promised review! (It's worth the wait, believe me.) 

And stay tuned today for all the details to enter our GIVEAWAY of this book! (for US residents only due to shipping sorry.)
Jacket description: 

"Dortchen Wild fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him.

Growing up in the small German kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in early Nineteenth century, Dortchen Wild is irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the young and handsome fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. 

It is a time of War, tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories, such as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'The Frog King' and 'Six Swans'. As she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. Yet the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen's father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream.

Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales."
 
International covers for Australia & UK and audiobook cover 
“Wild by name and wild by nature,” Dortchen Wild was the childhood sweetheart of Wilhelm Grimm and the heroine of Kate Forsyth’s latest novel The Wild Girl. The book follows the life of this extraordinary woman who supplied the brothers with many of their famous tales. ‘Hansel and Gretel,' 'Rumpelstiltskin,' and 'Six Swans' are all part of the treasury the Grimm brothers seek to collect when Napoleon's war comes to Hesse-Cassel. For Dortchen, however, these tales are not a political response against the French, nor a means to turn her family's fortune, but a way to communicate to Wilhelm the hopes and fears of her love for him.

In many ways, Dortchen’s life can be seen as a parallel to the tales she shares. Similar to 'Aschenputtel' (Cinderella), Dortchen is practically a kitchen maid to her family, although her sisters are kind to her. Later, she finds transformation by donning a beautiful dress to gain Wilhelm's attention. More disturbing, however, is her similarity to 'All-Kinds-of-Fur'. For those not familiar with the tale, the conflict revolves around a king trying to marry his daughter and went through drastic revisions in the Grimms’ treasury.  It quickly becomes apparent that Dortchen’s father harbors abusive tendencies and later it turns toward incest. But unlike her fairy tale counterpart, escape is not easily forthcoming for Dortchen. For much of the novel, the psychological effects of sexual trauma hold Dortchen a prisoner in her own skin. Jakob once tells Dortchen that she must fight for Wilhelm's affections, and fight she does, against the shadowy memory of her abusive father whose presence has power over her even after his death.  

Since Forsyth had little historical evidence to use from the writings of Dortchen herself, it’s fascinating to see how she explores what-could-have-been rather than adhering only to what-did-happen.  Notwithstanding, Forsyth's bibliography is extensive. She researched everything from the Grimms’ early manuscripts to contemporary analyses by fairy tale scholars. She even spoke with a descendant of Dortchen's brother. In light of the already extensive coverage of the Grimm's lives, it is refreshing to see Forsyth's evocative prose seamlessly transition research into fiction. Forsyth takes particular care to highlight the tellers of the tales themselves, elaborating on their middle class origins and dispelling the popular idea that they came from German peasantry. It is surprising that Dortchen’s place in history remains marginal considering that she contributed almost a quarter of the tales in the Grimm's first collection. Fortunately, through Forsyth, Dortchen is finally acknowledged.

Dortchen reminds us that the heroines and heroes of fairy tales are not flawless—they are always in search of something on their journeys. For Dortchen, it is the courage to overcome her fear of reliving abuse by another man (“I am trying to learn how to be brave,” she tells Wilhelm). And most importantly, it is also about reclaiming her freedom, the “wildness” her name alludes to.

The Wild Girl is not entirely a happy novel, nor is it a dark one. It is a beautiful historical romance on its own and a near true-to-life fairy tale told with touching detail of two lovers and their struggle to nourish that love despite the odds of war and trauma. Forsyth explores the silence around Dortchen's life by “listening to the story within the stories that she told,” bringing out the voice that was previously hidden by the stories that this woman treasured. The Wild Girl is a phenomenal retelling that enables us to read the Grimms’ fairy tales anew.
Disclosure: A complimentary copy of the book was sent to the reviewer (originally provided by the publishing company) in exchange for an honest review.

Christie Pang is a graduate student in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is also the curator for Pins and Needles (https://panfairytales.wordpress.com)a fledgling print and online fairy tale journal that foregrounds transformation in subverting societal norms. 

Christophe Gans' "Beauty & the Beast" (English dub) Available For Download via iTunes!!

Finally! A way has been made available for the many (many!) English-speaking people to see Gans' La Belle et La Bete in English (and in a region they can view it)!

!!!
(Just a few extra exclamation points for those of you who have been going out of their minds not being able to see this after all the amazing promotion.)

A very big thank you to 'Anonymous' who sent a link yesterday!

I was eventually able to view an English dubbed Blu-ray a little while back (now available in Australia since the end of June 2015, Canada since it was first released in its country of origin, and a limited release in January 2015 in Thailand) and this appears to be exactly that.

Though I personally would have much preferred the option of French language with English subtitles, (the particular combination of which I still can't find available) it seems the English dub is done by the lead actors themselves at least, if not the whole cast, and done very well. (Not the same, but it's a good compromise.)

I watched it with my husband and young son, and it's clearly meant to be family friendly (perhaps more French family than American, but I liked that too). Any violence (eg Beast eating) is implied and skillfully kept off-screen.

The magic (and the 'pretty') is turned up to eleven and the overall impression was very good to excellent. Both husband and son gave it a thumbs up and would happily watch it again. I have my criticisms but this isn't a review and that review would tell you, even with the criticisms, that it's definitely worth watching.
If you love Beauty and the Beast, or just fairy tales in general, you'll be very glad you watched. (And I suggest doing it before the live action Disney version comes out so it stands on it's own a little more as well.)

It's stunning, beautiful, magical. It's not perfect but I will tell you there are many things to love. The story behind how the Beast became a beast is possibly even more fairy tale than the main story and an amazing addition.

Here's the English trailer (with an example of the English dubs):
Go, pay, download, enjoy!

And, once the dust has settled here a little I will TRY to remember to do a real review.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Virtual Book Tour: "The Wild Girl" + Exclusive Chat 'Behind the Pages' with author Kate Forsyth!

Boy do we have a treat for you today! 

The lovely award-winning, Australian author, Kate Forsyth not only agreed to stop by Once Upon A Blog during her US release virtual book tour but we're allowed to ask her some questions so our fairy tale folk here can get an in depth, 'Behind the Pages' peek at the story and what it took to write it.

In case you aren't yet familiar with the premise The Wild Girl, here's a brief description (alternate description from Goodreads included at end of post):


One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old half-forgotten tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small over the land. 
As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart. Yet Dortchen is determined to find a way. 
Evocative and richly-detailed, Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl masterfully captures one young woman's enduring faith in love and the power of storytelling.
Now let's welcome Kate and get to the questions! (I have many!!)

Author Kate Forsyth
Fairy Tale News Hound (FTNH): G'day Kate! Welcome to Once Upon A Blog and thank you SO much for dropping by to answer some questions today. I love the story behind the stories, especially of the main story girl - the 'wild' girl, Dortchen - herself. 

When I tell other people about the book I feel I can’t quite communicate how important and significant I feel this book is. To me this is more than just a great story and a great read, though The Wild Girl is that too. It also feels like a strong step forward in understanding, not just in how we came to have the Grimm’s tales in the first place, but in understanding fairy tales and their importance altogether. While I had no problem envisioning the Grimm brothers as younger men, I never really thought about how their own loves and passions affected their tale collecting, writing and, as a result, their scholarship, let alone thought of the lives of the people telling the tales in the first place. After reading this, it makes me very glad the Grimms were so ‘human’ and full of emotions and passions, rather than my previous image of detached business men! Somehow, the tales seem even more important, with them being written down resulting from a combination of passionate scholarship and passionate living. Who could have imagined that the Grimm’s lived next door to the key to their success and Wilhelm’s own (eventual) happily ever after?! Thank you for taking the journey to write this book. There’s no way this story gave itself up easily - Dortchen’s own tale most certainly has "teeth, claws and a bloody lining"! - and yet it feels completely natural on every page.

You’ve blended fact so wonderfully with fiction I have to admit the line gets quite blurred while I’m reading, and I’m too busy reading to stop and go check on things I’m curious to know about! I gather, though, that’s very difficult to do with regard to the real life woman and how her stories were written down, particularly in such a tumultuous time in history.
Dortchen Wild telling Wilhelm Grimm fairy tales by Billerantik

FTNH: What aspects would you say are truly fictional, as opposed to having some clue in the various writings, letters and other documents you’ve unearthed, and what are the aspects you found factual basis to expand on that you felt were important to Dortchen’s story (and why)?

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Kate: THE WILD GIRL is, of course, a novel which means it is all fictional!

However, it was inspired by the true story of how the Grimm brothers came to collect their famous fairy tales and I did an enormous amount of research into the time and the place and the social milieu. The Grimm brothers wrote hundreds of letters, diaries, articles and books, and they have been so extensively studied that there is scarcely an event in their lives which has not been recorded. The lives of Dortchen Wild and her sisters, however, have left hardly any trace at all. Even Dortchen's birth date is a matter of conjecture and disagreement. All that is left in Dortchen's own voice are a few childhood letters and a very brief memoir she dictated to her daughter on her death-bed. 

So I began by establishing known facts - when the Grimm brothers first came to Kassel, when Napoleon's Grand Army invaded, when and how the brothers first began to collect old tales, and so on. I gradually built up an intricate timeline of events, including things like the comet of 1812 and the Year Without A Summer in 1816, when famine came to Europe after the fallout from a volcanic eruption in Java. Then I began to think and wonder and imagine what it must have been like to live during such cataclysmic events, and in particular, what it must have been like to have been a woman. 

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
During this period, I was also establishing as many known facts as I could about the life of Dortchen and her family. I knew very little to begin with - when she had first met Wilhelm, when she began to tell her stories, when they were married, and when she died. I gradually was able to establish other dates, however, particularly in relation to the stories she told Wilhelm, for he kept a rough record of what stories were told when, and by whom. Slowly and with much difficulty, I was able to create a timeline of the tales themselves, finding out who told them and where and when. It had never really been done before. It was like making a quilt from a thousand tiny scraps, all of which came from different places. The work of fairy tale scholars such as Jack Zipes, Valerie Paradiz, Heinz Rolleke, D.L. Ashliman and Cay Dollerup was utterly invaluable to me, each giving me small parts of the jigsaw. I also read primary sources, such as Wilhelm Grimm's own diary, or letters from friends, to help me. 

Once I had a clear timeline of Dortchen's tales, and some idea of where she was when the tales were told (in her sister's summerhouse, for example, or in the family's garden plot on the edge of town), I looked to the tales she had told as a way of getting a glimpse into her inner life. 

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Some of Dortchen's tales were very dark - Fitcher's Bird for example, a Bluebeard variant in which the heroine saves herself and her sisters, and All-Kinds-of-Fur, a story of a king who wants to marry his own daughter. I wondered why a young woman, brought up in such a strict patriarchal society, would tell a young man such tales. I wondered when she and Wilhelm first fell in love, and what kept them apart from so long. I wondered why Wilhelm had originally published the stories as they had been told to him, then later changed them so they were not quite as horrifying. I wondered about all these things, and many more, and then did my best to weave a story out of all my wonderings.

Of course, many things which happen in my story are unlikely to be true. For example, it is known that only one soldier returned to Kassel after Napoleon's disastrous march on Moscow, from a conscripted army of 30,000. It is highly unlikely that the one returning soldier was Dortchen's brother ... but it made a much better story to have it be so. 

Another example is the truth of the breakdown of Ferdinand, one of the younger Grimm brothers. It is known there was some kind of emotional upheaval that upset his elder brothers greatly, and it is conjectured to have had something to do with Dortchen. Wilhelm and Jacob wrote very little about it, and so I had to find my own explanation for his wild mood swings, long periods of lassitude, and the way the two elder brothers tried to hush up the whole affair. His symptoms seemed very like drug addiction to me, and I knew that opium addiction was a great social problem of the time ... and that Dortchen's father was an apothecary who would have made laudanum as a matter of course ... and so I came up with my own solution to the mystery...
Display from Grimm Brothers Museum for the 200th Anniversary of the 1st edition of Household Tales

FTNH: Are there other clues and facts from your research you couldn’t find a way to include but wish you had?

Kate: No, not at all. I always knew I was telling Dortchen's story and that I had to concentrate on those facts which would help me do that.


FTNH: I read that when you were researching Bitter Greens you came across Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiz, which inspired you to look deeper into Dortchen’s story. When you found out the author hadn’t kept her notes, how did you then go about your research, without being able to retrace her footsteps as planned? How did you find out more when you only had a letter and some footnotes (essentially) to go on?


Kate: Yes, I first read about Dortchen Wild in Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. Dr. Paradiz had examined most of the female tellers of the Grimm brothers' famous tales - Dortchen Wild was only one of them and the fact that she ended up marrying Wilhelm was added almost as an afterthought in the final chapter. I was immediately electrified by her story, and knew I wanted to write a novel based on her life. I was then in the midst of writing another fairy-tale-inspired novel, BITTER GREENS, which was the major creative component of my doctorate. So it was a while before I could settle down to do my research for THE WILD GIRL. I wrote to Dr. Paradiz and  was very disappointed to learn that she had not kept any of her research after moving house (very understandable too! I have boxes and boxes and boxes of my research notes). Luckily I really love to research. I went about it slowly and doggedly, acquiring books and academic articles, reading everything I could lay my hands on (I even tried to teach myself German so I could read the original oral tales, which had not at that time been translated into English). Jack Zipes has recently brought out a wonderful edition of all the original stories and I can't help thinking how useful that would have been to me, if only he'd brought it out a little sooner!
It was not just the lives of the Grimm brothers I was researching, but also life during the Napoleonic wars and the everyday lives of women at that time. It was a big job! I was very lucky in that I had help. For example, I found a German researcher who was able to go and look at all the original parish records and work out for me the exact dates of the births, deaths and marriages of the Wild family for the first time. And I found a descendant of the Wild family who was able to give me some snippets of family lore, plus translated one of Wilhelm's diaries into English for me (also for the first time). Then many fairy tale scholars were interested in my project and helped me by sending me their research, or by patiently answering my questions.


FTNH: Were there any sorts of clues in the stories Dortchen told the Grimms to get you started or direct your digging?

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Kate: Absolutely! I used her stories as a sort of template to help me create a narrative structure. Dortchen told Wilhelm such well-known tales as Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Elves and the Shoemaker, Six Swans, The Frog King ... and lesser known tales such as Sweetheart Roland, The Singing, Springing Lark (a beautiful variant on the Beauty & the Beast tale with a much more interesting and active heroine), Fitcher's Bird, The Singing Bone, and All-Kinds-of-Fur. I chose seven of her tales as the framework for my novel, and I looked to the inner meaning and motifs of the tale to give me some kind of glimpse into her inner world. Probably the most devastating of these tales, in what it might imply for Dortchen's life, is that of All-Kinds-of-Fur. It was the last tale Dortchen told Wilhelm before the first collection of tales was sent to the printers (she told it on October 9th, 1812 and the book was released in December of the same year). He wrote it down and sent it in haste, and so it is very close to the oral version he heard from her. It’s a story of a girl whose father wants to marry her, and who will not be thwarted in his desire. She asks for all kinds of impossible tasks to be undertaken to try and delay him, including a coat made from the skin of every living creature in the kingdom. Her father does not hesitate to kill and flay all the creatures and presents the coat of all-kinds-of-fur to her. She uses it to disguise herself and escape, only to be caught by another king who abuses and mistreats her ... then marries her in the end. There's a lot of violence as well as implied incest in the original version of All-Kinds-of-Fur.  When Wilhelm was preparing for the second edition of the tales, he rewrote the story to make it quite clear that the king who marries her at the end of the story is not the king, her father - something which was not at all clear in the original oral story, which had a terrible breathlessness and intensity to it.
"The Brothers Grimm at the Fairy Tale Ladys" oil on Canvas, by Louis Katzenstein
[Dorothea Viehmann telling tales to the Grimm brothers, with her charges (possibly the Wild family) present]
FTNH: I have to admit I thought Bitter Greens was amazing (and congratulations on your ALA award!) but The Wild Girl is, hands down, my favorite book you’ve written to date - for so many reasons. My most urgent - and possibly most selfish - question is: is there any chance at all you’ll release an annotated version?  I feel like there are so many little pieces of information the story didn’t have the room to give us (because it was Dortchen’s personal story after all) and there are so many side-notes you make reference to in your author’s notes and interviews, that I’d love to be able to touch on those in context as I re-read, so… please? (With cornflowers on top?*)
*If you don't know what this is in reference to, you'll have to read the book and find out... ;)

Kate: What a lovely idea! I'd love to do it one day. I need someone to do their doctorate on it! Or for it to be such an astounding international bestseller that people are hungry to know more and demand someone published such a thing.  We could do it with all the beautiful Grimm illustrations ... and Dortchen's recipes (some of the meals in the book actually come from Dortchen's own recipe book, she was meant to be an amazing cook!) ... and with photographs** of my handwritten notebooks...
**WE HAVE A PREVIEW OF SOME OF THESE PHOTOS IN THIS POST!!! (Thank you Kate!!)

FTNH: I love the way the tales are constant touchstones throughout the book. There are quotes from tales in different sections, you allude to others in the titles of chapters, such as “Weaving Nettles”, “Girl in Ashes”, and “The Skin of Wild Beasts”. How and when in your writing process did you go about choosing which went where?

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Kate: It was an ongoing process! As I said earlier, one of the first things I did was work out (very slowly and with a great deal of difficulty) when Dortchen had told her tales and laid them out in chronological order. Then I compared that timeline to my greater historical timeline, and what I knew about the Grimm and Wild families. I examined each story for its motifs and meanings, and then thought about how I could use it within the novel. Hansel and Gretel, the tale of unloved and abandoned children ... Six Swans, a story about a girl who must remain mute ... Fitcher's Bird, about a girl who tries to save her sisters ... The Singing Bone, a story about rivalry between brothers .... Sweetheart Roland, a tale in which a man forgets his true love and almost marries another ... Once I began, it was surprisingly easy.


FTNH: You mention in your notes that there’s a veiled reference to Dortchen as a ‘wild deer’ in the final version of “All-Kinds-Of-Fur”. Could you explain how you discovered this and how Dortchen is this “wild” girl?

Lowenburg Castle (Lion's Castle), Kassel, Germany
Brothers Grimm statue, Kassel, Germany

Kate: Yes, that was a wonderful discovery. So romantic! It was not my discovery as such. One of my key texts was an essay on All-Kinds-of-Fur  by the Danish fairy tale scholar Cay Dollerup, in which he tells the anecdote of how Dortchen told Wilhelm the tale and he rushed it off to the printers so it could be included in the first collection. Dr. Dollerup then examines the editorial changes made by Wilhelm in the second edition, which tone down the violence a great deal and make clear the two kings are not the same man. He notes that - in the scene when the second king finds (and rescues) the poor hunted princess in her coat of all-kinds-of-fur - Wilhelm capitalised the W in the phrase “seht doch, was dort für ein Wild sich versteckt hat” which roughly translates to mean, 'what Wild creature is hiding here?' (Sometimes translated as Wild thing or Wild deer). By capitalising the W in wild, Wilhelm was, I believe, making a clear reference to the woman who would later become his wife. It also links Dortchen very strongly to the character of the hunted princess of the tale.  As a novelist, I am always interested in why things happen, why people do what they do. It's the psychological motivations of people that interest me. So, of course,  once I realised that Wilhelm had rewritten All-Kinds-of-Fur so extensively and with such clear intent to remove the ugly incestuous relationship in it - and that he had capitalised the W in the word wild - well, I wanted to know why.  I am very interested in the therapeutic use of fairy tales and this particular tale is often used to help victims of father-daughter incest. The idea is that the first oral tale is incest fulfilled, the second edited tale is incest averted. By making the changes that he did, Wilhelm changed the whole meaning of the tale. One of the redemptive powers of storytelling is the ability it gives us to control our destiny. We choose the tale that we tell about ourselves. By changing the story to that of a girl who escapes the shadow of her father and finds love elsewhere, Wilhelm was - I believe - giving Dortchen a kind of gift, a chance to rewrite her own story with a happy ending. That seemed unbelievably beautiful and powerful and romantic to me, and so it became a central part of the novel.
Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl - photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
FTNH: There are many references through The Wild Girl to the tales Sweetheart Roland and All-Kinds-Of-Fur, in particular. How did you decide these stories were so important to Dortchen’s personal story? 

Close-up of Dortchen Wild telling
Wilhelm Grimm fairy tales by Billerantik
Kate: While I was planning and researching THE WILD GIRL, I was very struck by the uncanny similarities between her life and that of the heroines of the stories she told. That is one reason why I chose to use her tales as intertexts. Sweetheart Roland, for example, is a story about a young woman who escapes a witch by turning her own magic against her, only to have her sweetheart forget her. The girl discovers her sweetheart is to marry another, and goes to the wedding where she sings so sweetly the unfaithful bridegroom remembers her and returns to her. This seemed to reflect what had happened in Dortchen and Wilhelm's relationship, in which he had for a period of time seemed likely to marry another.


FTNH: Of all the other tales that Dortchen told Wilhelm, which do you feel also had particular personal meaning to her?

Portrait of Wilhelm by brother & artist
Ludwig Emil Grimm
who illustrated an early version of
Household Tales (1819)
Kate: One of my all-time favourite fairy tales is Six Swans, and I was so pleased when I learned it had been one of Dortchen's tales. It is a story about a young woman who must be mute for six years, while she weaves shirts from nettles for her brothers, who have all been transformed into swans. The level of silent suffering of the heroine is extraordinary - it is a story of such sacrifice and redemption - and I felt it resonated strongly with Dortchen's story. She was forbidden to see the man she loved, she was expected to sacrifice herself to nurse her sick parents and then the children of her dead sister, she was silenced by the autocratic will of her father and indeed by the strict patriarchal society in which she lived, she had to labour in the garden and the house and the apothecary (slashing nettles, sewing clothes, mixing potions), she keeps mute about her own needs and desires to such an extent that she has been long forgotten...
FTNH: Finally - I have no doubt this book must have been personally difficult to write and experience on many levels, as well as to have a different perspective on tales, even those you already knew well. How has researching and writing this book changed your perspective on fairy tale storytelling, writing (down) and rewriting?

Graves of the Brothers Grimm
in the St Matthaus Kirchhof Cemetery
in Schöneberg, Berlin -photo by Thorleif Wiik
Kate: The Wild Girl was the most difficult book I have ever written, for a multitude of reasons. First, the research was so time-consuming and painstaking, and I had to be very patient and dogged in my approach which is not perhaps natural to me (I'm not known for my patience!). Secondly, I lived within Dortchen's skin for a very long time and so I suffered everything she suffered. As I began to discover things that seemed more and more likely to have happened to her, I felt a growing sense of dread. I wanted to try and save her, but then I had to be true to the story that was revealing itself to me. I had a crisis of faith. Did I have the right to imagine someone else's life? What if I was wrong? In the end, I had to choose - I had to tell the story that seemed true to me. But it was an agonising decision, because these were real people I was writing about and I did not know the real facts ... nobody did. I clung to Virginia Woolf's saying that fiction can be more true than fact, and just did the very best I could do, telling the emotional truth as I saw it. 

Kassel, Grimms statue in Winter
Many of the dreams I describe in the book are the nightmares I myself had to endure and so the book was a form of exorcism for me as well. 

And technically it was a difficult book to write. The action covers twenty years of one woman's life, and she was a simple apothecary's daughter, not very well-educated, that lived through a time of war and famine and crushing poverty. Her love affair is dragged out over more than a decade (a long time to sustain sexual tension!) and so I had to find other ways to create a book full of suspense. I felt it very important to be true to the known facts of her life, but, oh, how I wished she and Wilhelm had married ten years earlier! The book took me a lot longer to write than I had expected, and so I had my publishers waiting for it which added to my burden. 

Nonetheless, I loved it all. It was such an extraordinary journey of discovery for me, and I loved learning so much about more about the history and meaning of the fairy tales I had always loved. I'm very glad that so many people have come to love my Wild Girl as much as I do!
Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl - photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Thank you again for this wonderful - and super in-depth! - interview today Kate! 

We know we used up our entire question quota and greatly appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and letting us peek behind the pages.

We wish you every success in making Dortchen a household name, and in having your own tales continue to become known “throughout many lands”.

And that concludes our very special interview for today.
(I have my fingers crossed for the annotated version so we can bring her back to talk even more...)
As a wonderful bonus, Kate has generously sent some photos from the pages of her notebooks for THE WILD GIRL that I have scattered throughout the interview text! (We are so lucky!) If you haven't already, click on them to see the pages full size and check out her research notes - seriously awesome stuff.

Extra awesome bonus:
TOMORROW, we are launching a GIVEAWAY for your very own copy of
THE WILD GIRL!
(US only due to International shipping, very sorry non-US folks! We hope we have something to offer you soon.)
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"Dortchen Wild fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him.

Growing up in the small German kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in early Nineteenth century, Dortchen Wild is irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the young and handsome fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. 

It is a time of War, tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories, such as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'The Frog King' and 'Six Swans'. As she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. Yet the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen's father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream.

Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales."
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We'll also be posting our Once Upon A Blog official reviewer, Christie Pang's review of The Wild Girl so you can get a different perspective from my personal one on the book, along with all the details on how to enter our giveaway. 
Tune in tomorrow!