2FER!

This Monday it's a 2-for-1 special from the Evil Overlord! I am participating in BOTH Blue Monday with Smiling Sal, as well as Book Blogger Appreciation Week with My Friend Amy. I could even use this post in a few days for Vintage Thingies Thursday! Be sure to visit the Blue Monday participants who are linked at Sal's site and see their nifty blue items. Visiting Amy's Book Blogger Appreciation Week will give you many opportunities to sign up for some great giveaways! It's going on all week, so go check it out!
The first movie I ever saw in a theater was the Disney version of Cinderella. I was about 4 or 5 and it was a special outing just for me with my dad. I don't know if it was seeing the story with the dancing mice and singing birds is what hooked me, or all of the classic fairy tale stories that my mom read to me that were so beautifully illustrated, but legends, myths and other folklore have always caught my attention. While working on my degree in Elementary Education I prepared several projects for classes and units of study for children that taught elements of folklore. As a 6th grade English teacher I prepared a unit studying all types of folklore, which surprisingly, most students had not yet been exposed.

I have a very small collection of vintage books that I collected as a child. These were all bought to be read; I usually got them at yard sales. One of the oldest of my books is The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, which was originally published in England in 1889. It contained a wide range of tales, with seven from the Brothers Grimm, five from Madame d'Aulnoy, three from the Arabian Nights, and four Norse stories, among other sources.I have no idea how old this book is, because it does not have a publication or copyright date, but I used some clues to shoot for an era. Based on the style of illustration and type of binding, and comparing it to other books of the era, I am guessing early 20th century.The front end paper is an aqua blue and cream illustration of a young girl. The book was once owned by Patricia Moran, who left her name behind. On the title page of the book, her sister Jean left her name and class number from St. Ephraim's School!
The paper is very rough and thick, almost a type of newsprint. There are very few illustrations, and most seem to be done in a pretty basic wood block type style. They have a lot of large black areas, which made scanning them difficult. A few illustrations fill a page and are vertical/portrait, but there are 2 that are actually landscape and the reader has to turn the book to see the picture! Another thing about the illustrations that isn't seen these days is that the same image is used multiple times. There is a castle that is used more than seven times, and every story with a cat has the same Puss 'n Boots at the end of the tale.

From this illustration of Puss 'n Boots

you can see how thin the paper is,

with the text from the back coming through.

This is the only colored illustration in my book. It is on a different type of paper than the rest of the book, very smooth.

Andrew Lang's Fairy Books or "Coloured" Fairy Books are a twelve-book series of collections from a variety of cultures. Although Lang did not directly collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the exception of Madame d'Aulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. Although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories. [edited from Wikipedia.]

Again, please take some time to visit the sites of those participating in Book Blogger Appreciation Week and Blue Monday! AND stop by and see how I attempt to tie reading and books in to all my posts this week!