Fairy Tale Roots

One thing I learned talking to different publishers is that if you really want to publish yet another fairy tale it needs to be breathtakingly different. They showed me extraordinary books and left me speechless.

And that there does not seem to be much money in fairy tales.

The latter does not put me off, I just can’t help loving fairy tales. To me they NEVER get old and can be done and redone and reinvented and I just never tire of them. And there are sooooooo many of them! All cultures know them. They are my biggest obsession.

Looking back to my childhood it really is no wonder…
I grew up with cheap and cheerful fairy tale collections, fairy tales on vinyl that crackled more and more with every use, boxes of tapes, the wonderful paper-cut fairy tales of Lotte Reiniger and thanks to East German TV the fairy tale adaptations of Film Studios in Russia or the Czech Republic/Slovakia. Amazing stuff!

There was Jim Henson of course, hard to do justice to the HUGE influence the “story teller” had on me. The trailer alone gives me goose bumps: “the best place at the fire was kept for….the story teller” * shiver*
And there was Norse mythology! Full of ravens and wolves and places like “the ironwood forest”. I was utterly fascinated!
A general love of escapism in every shape or form I suppose. And seeing magic in every ordinary thing.
I was born into a bibliophile household and to go anywhere without bringing a book along with me is still unimaginable!

While nothing might be truly original every artists adds his or her own spin on a tale.
I have different interpretations of the same classic tales and all are different and great.
Done by PJ Lynch, Vadislav Yerko, Lisbeth Zwerger, Robert Ingpen, Karel Franta (…) and these artists have amazing skills!
They created magic.

So these are my roots and also my aspirations. It’s a long way to go!