Arcimboldo and The Tale of Despereaux

I skipped lunch the other day to watch the exhibition film for Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy, currently on view at the National Gallery, which references the character of Boldo in the animated feature The Tale of Despereaux.  That's Boldo in the image above, a character composed entirely of fruits and vegetables, pots and pans--distinctly resembling the composite heads painted by his namesake, the Renaissance artist Arcimboldo.

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember a character named Boldo in Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Award-winning novel The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread (illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering with no apparent debt to Arcimboldo; Scholastic, 2003) and was forced to reread it.  In vain, as it turns out: Boldo (a sort of soup genie) was created for the movie version of the book (which I also watched this weekend). The animation, by London-based Framestore, employs a palette and lighting drawn from the Dutch Masters; and the movie also spotlights two portraits, one of the deceased Queen and another of Princess Pea.  Altogether I prefer the movie.  You can watch a video podcast (of the exhibition film, that is! It's narrated by Isabella Rossellini) here, or better yet, at the National Gallery til January 9, 2011.

[Here's Arcimboldo's Vertumnus (c. 1591, on loan from Skokloster Castle in Sweden) for comparison to Boldo.  Note especially the apple cheeks!]

Emily's Quest

The portrait of Elisabeth Bas featured in August's Middle Grade Gallery hangs by the fireplace in the Disappointed House, as furnished by Emily Starr and Dean Priest during their ill-fated engagement in Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery.  This is the third and final book in the Emily series, which isn't nearly as beloved as Montgomery's Anne series (or so I am forced to conclude, since no one guessed.  Members of the Emily Starr Fan Club, please leave a comment).

I didn't love Emily either, but I still like to reread the chapter of Emily's Quest dedicated to making over the Disappointed House (it's Chapter 9), inside and out.  Montgomery describes everything, from the wallpaper in the living-room ("shadowy grey with snowy pine branches over it") to Emily's great-grandmother's wedding china (willow-ware) to the brass chessy-cat door knocker on the front porch door.  And of course, the pictures:  Lady Giovanna, Mona Lisa...and Elisabeth Bas.

Spoiler alert:  Emily breaks off her engagement to Dean when she realizes that she still loves Teddy, and the Disappointed House is boarded up again.  But years later, Dean gives the deed to the house and all it contains to Emily as a wedding gift.  I can't imagine Emily and Teddy actually living there among Dean's things, but it's always been my House of Dreams.

Does anyone else remember the Disappointed House? Or, for that matter, Anne's House of Dreams (perhaps my favorite of the Anne books)?  Which would you prefer?

Despicable Me and Sleepy Kittens

The best part of the movie Despicable Me, for my money anyway, is when Gru reads a bedtime story to Margo, Edith, and Agnes, the three little girls he's adopted to help him infiltrate his nemesis Vector's lair.  The book he reads--at Agnes's insistence--is called Sleepy Kittens; it's a novelty book featuring three kitten finger puppets who drink their milk, brush their fur, you get the idea.  Gru is disgusted: "This is garbage!  You like this?"  (Of course they do.)  I think he even suggests that a two-year-old could have written it.  I'm sure a lot of parents have thought they could do better when it comes to their kids' books, too.  It's harder than it looks.

Anyway, the smart merchandising folks at Universal published Sleepy Kittens as a movie tie-in, finger puppets and all.  Apparently the actual book is not as good as the one in the movie, in a sort of meta-reversal of people's usual complaints, but it's a clever idea nonetheless.

[And one that the people who made Michael Clayton missed out on completely.  My post on the middle-grade fantasy novel featured in that movie, Realm+Conquest, consistently gets more hits than anything else I've written here, and despite the fact that Realm+Conquest is not a real book, people continue to ask me where they can get it.  Someone please write that book already!]

Back to Despicable Me.  Later in the movie, Gru reads the girls a book he's written just for them, The Lonely Unicorn.  He should probably stick to his day job, but the girls love it.  (Of course they do.)  Have you seen the movie?  Did you?

KidsPost Summer Book Club 2010

The tenth annual KidsPost Summer Book Club reading list came out today.  This year, the focus is on new books by "rock star" authors (last year it was nonfiction).  The first three books on the list are Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid; Ann M. Martin's prequel to The Baby-Sitters Club series, The Summer Before; and Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer by John Grisham.  Not really my kind of list!  But there's probably something on there for everyone, and for me that something might be Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky (Candlewick).  KidsPost describes it thusly:  "The author of the "Guardians of Ga'hoole" series writes a story set in Indiana in the 1950s."

Not a particularly compelling description, is it?  Maybe the publisher can do better:  When a beautiful teen with polio enters their lives, a girl and her older brother find themselves drawn into a web of lies.  The polio epidemic?  Why didn't you say so, KidsPost?  It's on the hold list.