Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: The Pied Piper of Hamelin

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“‘Please your honors,’ said he, ‘I’m able, by means of a secret charm, to draw all creatures living beneath the sun that creep, or swim, or fly, or run, after me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm on creatures that do people harm: the mole, and toad, and newt, and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper.’”
-An introduction to a character that needs no introduction

For 300 years, a stained glass window depicting a colorfully dressed piper stood in the church of the German town of Hamelin. Although the window was destroyed in 1660, records detail the message enshrined upon it:

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on June 26, by a piper, clothed in many kinds of colors, 130 born in Hamlin were seduced and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.

Another entry in Hamelin’s town records dating from 1384 follows up with a grim assessment:

It has been 100 years since our children left.

It’s said that every folk story and fairy tale has a grain of truth to them…which can make the tale in question even more disturbing when there are written accounts to back it up. Such is the case with The Pied Piper of Hamelin. We know something terrible right out of a fantasy story did indeed happen, but the details and reasoning behind it are lost to time. From there the human imagination takes over and fills in the spaces with dark suppositions. What of this enigmatic Piper who lured so many victims to an unknown fate? Is he Death personified? One of the fae? A remnant of the mysterious dancing plague that struck 14th century Europe? Was he a colorful recruiter of German colonizers looking to settle further east? A metaphor for the Children’s Crusade, where thousands of children were rounded up to take the Holy Land only to never return? Or, perhaps, a dark manifestation of the fear of child predators?

Curiously, neither the window nor documents make any mention of a rat plague that so often accompanies retellings of the Pied Piper story. That aspect didn’t appear until the 16th century. The wonder and terror surrounding the Piper’s doings have inspired one interpretation after another. Can Faerie Tale Theatre recapture the magic, or is it full of sour notes?

A Snippet of an Untold Dragon Story

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and you thought dragons didn't exist, barry, boy, chapter book, children's story, children’s book, China, chinese dragon, chinese folklore, chinese girl, dragon, dragon egg, dragon flight, dragon folktales, dragon stories, dragon story, dragon tales, dragons, fiction, flash fiction, flying dragon, girl, great wall of china, last dragon, middle grade fiction, original story, Original Writing, story idea, yún, zuìhòh

Hey all! I’ve been going through some of my old writing for new story ideas and I rediscovered something I wrote five years ago that I felt like sharing with you. I created this in a twenty-minute sprint based on the sentence prompt “And you thought dragons didn’t exist”. The way it turned out, it read less like a short story and more like a chapter pulled from a preexisting book. For a time I constructed a plot to go around it, but eventually dropped it in pursuit of other projects. Having read it again, I felt inspired to return to work on it. I re-edited what I originally wrote, and that’s what I’d like to present to you today.

The plot, as of posting this, goes thusly: In modern-day China, a great-grandmother gives a young girl the location of the last dragon egg with her dying breath. The girl raises the dragon while keeping it a secret from her family. After she befriends her former bully, the son of the American ambassador, they must work together to learn its secrets before one of their respective governments can capture it. Think How To Train Your Dragon meets E.T. or The Iron Giant. The ideal age group for this book would be middle grade (about 8-12 years old) so keep that in mind. And now, I take you to a wooded park in the middle of China, where our story is already in progress:

January Review: Pinocchio (1940)

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1940's, a real boy, adaptation, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, anthropomorphic, anthropomorphic animal, anthropomorphic animals, Bill Tytla, Blue Fairy, Carlo Collodi, children's story, children’s book, Christian Rub, classic, classic disney, classic Hollywood, cleo, Cliff Edwards, coachman, conscience, cricket, Dick Jones, Dickie Jones, Disney, disney animated, disney animated feature, disney animated movie, disney animation, disney golden age, disney review, donkey, donkey scene, donkey transformation, donkeys, figaro, foulfellow, fox and cat, Frank Churchill, Frank Thomas, Fred Moore, Gepetto, giant whale, gideon, Give A Little Whistle, golden age of Hollywood, hand drawn animation, Hi Fiddle Dee Dee, honest john, I've Got No Strings, italy, j. worthington foulfellow, jiminy cricket, Joe Grant, John Lounsbury, lampwick, Little Wooden Head, marionette, Mel Blanc, Milt Kahl, monstro, nine old men, Pinocchio, pleasure island, puppet, puppet show, puppeteers, puppets, real boy, star, stromboli, swallowed by a whale, traditional animation, transformation, Turn On The Old Music Box, Ukelele Ike, Vladimir Tytla, Walt Disney, Walter Catlett, whale, whale chase, When You Wish Upon a Star, wishing star, Wolfgang Reitherman, woodcarver, Woolie Reitherman

“When You Wish Upon A Star
Makes No Difference Who You Are
Anything Your Heart Desires
Will Come To You…”

In my last review, I compared Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Star Wars; a blockbuster that captivated audiences, revolutionized filmmaking, and was an all-around fun adventure with a likable cast. Well if Snow White is Disney’s Star Wars – before Disney owned Lucasfilm, I mean – then Pinocchio is undoubtedly Disney’s Empire Strikes Back: refined visuals, more complex storytelling and characters, and much, MUCH darker.

The success of Snow White marked the beginning of big things for Disney animation. The sizable influx of cash meant Walt could build a bigger studio, hire more staff, and give his projects a noticeably larger budget. The question is, where to go from here? What movie could possibly follow the fairest one of all? Investors were clamoring for a sequel and the idea was toyed with for a time, but Walt was not a one-trick pony. Then animator Norm Ferguson brought a copy of Carlo Collodi’s Le avventuri di Pinocchio to Walt’s attention. Walt and a few of his key guys had attended a performance of Yasha Frank’s successful staging of Pinocchio prior to Snow White’s release and noted the story had possibilities for adaptation – plenty of spectacle, cute comic relief critters, etc. Seeing that book sparked Walt’s memory; after reading it, he intended to make Pinocchio his third animated venture behind the upcoming Bambi. But when that movie ran into production troubles, Pinocchio was bumped up to its place. Does it measure up to Snow White, though? Let’s find out.