Rococo Rapunzel

Does this scene look familiar?  It might, if you've recently seen a certain computer-animated adaptation of one of my favorite fairy tales.  The good news is I liked it a lot more than I thought I would based on the trailer (which was not at all).

The bad news is it doesn't really resemble Fragonard's The Swing (which, coincidentally enough, I also saw recently, at the Wallace Collection), although the animators referenced the painting for inspiration (Bill Desowitz, "Chicken Little and Beyond," Animation World Network, 11/4/2005).  The more I look at it, though, the more I notice elements of The Swing--the palette, the frothiness of the flowers and leaves--that did make it into the movie.  Oh, and this iconic image:

Have you seen Tangled?  What did you think?

Hansel and Gretel, costume design by Zwerger and Stemple

The costume and set design for the Amherst Ballet's Hansel and Gretel is faithful to Lisbeth Zwerger's watercolor illustrations of the Grimm tale, "right down to the shingles on the witch’s house [and] the patterns hand-printed on the dancers’ skirts" (Shop Talk, 8/25/2010).   If you know me at all, you'll know that I love this project.  Premiering at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

For the grownups, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant (Delacorte, 2010), reviewed in the Washington Post (8/23/10).  There's a lot to recommend this novel to adult readers of children's books, especially ones that have something to do with the Grimms (and there are an awful lot of them, readers and Grimm books alike):  the heroine, 10-year-old-Pia (and her only friend, StinkStefan), the setting, a small town in Germany; and the local folklore and traditions that inform the whole story.  PW describes it as a "charming horror novel" (4/12/2010).  I try to stay away from horror novels of any sort, but just look at that gorgeous yellow cover.

Pinkney's Lion and the Mouse lie down with the lamb

Or rather, the antelope.  One of my favorite details of Jerry Pinkney's Caldecott Medal-winning The Lion and the Mouse (Little, Brown, 2009) is the homage to Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom paintings (with Serengeti animals) on the back cover, under the dust jacket.  Pinkney discussed the influence of Hicks and other artists on his work in The Lion and the Mouse in an interview with Reading Rockets ("A playful, peaceable kingdom"). 

We have a Peaceable Kingdom at the National Gallery, and I look forward to sharing Pinkney's interpretation of the theme with visiting students alongside Hicks's.  Thank you, Mr. Pinkney, and congratulations!

[Sadly, I don't have a digital image of Pinkney's Peaceable Kingdom to post; but you'll want to peek under the dust jacket of your own copy to find it anyway.]