Goblins - Brian Froud

****June 17 Note: A very kind blogger, Hector Ugalde Uch left a comment with a link to the Brian Froud covers. A very big thank you to him. And, he has an amazing site devoted to pop-up books at www.librospopup.blogspot.com that is well worth visiting.******

According to Amazon.co.uk, the only review says: "This is the only pop-up book Brian has ever done and is an absolute family classic and a complete rarity as it was only published in 1983. Contains beautiful, detailed illustrations and amazing pop-up mechanics that literally bring this book alive. Incredible!"

This is the book I found at Holly-Anne's school fair a week ago. It is in pretty good condition, and for the Out of Time 2 Challenge I decided to forgo British Folk Tales by Katherine Briggs, for this one. And, it is as the above quote says, incredible. The illustrations are in colour, and the story is about a little girl named Myrtle who is taken to the woods to see goblins by Edward. She keeps saying she doesn't see any goblins.....but of course, we do! I have not shown this yet to my kids (even though i bought it for them) for fear I won't get it back or it will get ripped. I love it already! The goblins ARE scary, and hidden in trees, behind rocks, in the ground, even the trees have faces. She sees a fairy ring but no goblins even though they fill the entire page and pop out at the reader!! She even finds a stone with a hole through it, but still can't see any goblins. This is a delightful, wonderful book for the whole family to read and enjoy together. Can you find the goblins? How many can you see? you'd say to the children, and try to count how many on each page. The illustrations are rich - not bright colours, but earth colours of brown and green and tan, as befitting goblins, creatures of the earth that they are. While the goblins have threatening expressions, the spirit of the book and the two characters is so much fun that any child couldn't help but laugh even if the goblins scared them! Myrtle is so convinced there aren't any that even when they jump out, she can't see them!

This was a real find, a real treasure. And I guess tomorrow - and on June 20, the summer solstice, a magical time of year! - I will let my kids look at the pictures and maybe pull at the flaps.........Books are meant to be loved, after all, and I want my children to have a sense of wonder and magic and believe that fairies are possible....though after reading the stories in The Fair Folk, I'm not sure I want to meet any!

I will save British Folk Tales for next year. I do want to read it, I'm just not in the mood and am running out of time. Once I saw Goblins, I realized I wanted something fun, since alot of my reading for this challenge has been serious and big books! Since I don't own any books by artists of fantasy or fairies, this is my first picture book with that feeling of Faerie. And of Puck, and Will Shakespeare, who I am reading on Friday night in honour of the solstice, as Carl mentions in his post for the OUT2.


The book ends with the little phrase "Where Thorn-trees abound
There Goblins be found"

I'm counting this book as my folk-tale entry into the Out of Time 2 Challenge.

This was fun!!

things I have learned......

Things I have learned this week, this month, and this past 6 months of blogging:

- I went to Carl's site tonight and found not one, but two posts on faerie: Neil Gaiman (and the first photo made my heart stop, it is so breathtaking of Neil), and Brian Froud, and the links between them. I just watched Labyrinth (Brian Froud was the designer)last summer, for the first time in 20 years, and I enjoyed it, surprisingly so. and the poster that Carl was giving away, "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Brian Froud, is one i am too late to put my name in the draw for (since the draw was yesterday!), but I want that too - the poem is instructions for entering the dark wood of fairytales, and it is beautiful and wondrous and magical, and found in "Fragile Things", Neil's latest short story collection that I am in the process of reading. I had read the poem recently and fell in love with it, and now I know it's a poster....my birthday list is growing! Please check out Carl's two posts, they each are incredible. What I learned - other than the same synchronicity Carl was talking about, at work in my life! - was that there is a whole group of us who love fairy tales and fantasy books, which are my main love. I am not alone!! I know people read fantasy in Ottawa (we've held conventions over the years, and had two specialty bookstores for science fiction, both gone now), but not so many people talk about it, and that is what I have been missing.

- I have discovered that we love books, and talking about them, sharing our thoughts, reactions, joys and disappointments. In amongst the books, we talk about our lives, too, and it's like a glimpse of one another through starlight - here's a star in Minneapolis, there's another in Germany, another in South Korea, several in Canada, oh another in England and still another in Ireland - oh look, France has joined....Australia....many many more the world over - so many in the US- I know this is what the Internet is, but this is wondrous, that we all can connect over our love of books. It's like how long-distance letter writing used to be (and I remember those days!), only this is more immediate, and this has its good sides (we get immediate comments on our ideas and thoughts, and cheered up and find amazing books!) and its bad side (those of us who write books end up blogging more instead of creatively writing!! and spouses come wandering over to see where we disappeared to...). I'm still in my baby steps, and i have to admit that it is a thrill to check my blog every night when I come home from work and see who has dropped by.

- BAFAB week - all the giveaways and contests. I don't care if I won or not. This is my first year blogging, and my very first witnessing to the incredible sharing of books in the book blogging world. What a wonderful idea, and it's amazing and fun to see how generous we are with our books. It's like saying "here, read this!" over and over! I had no idea when I started my blog that this book blogging community even existed, and I am thrilled to be part of it. Next BAFAB, I will be ready!

- that we have lots of thoughts about what we read. I know there has been a growing backlash from 'critics' about book bloggers and our lack of credentials, but I've decided that the book critics are jealous. We write about books because we love them, and we have an instinctual - and good reaction to whether we like them or not, or if they make sense. I studied literature at university, and it killed my ability to write for several years after. Not on purpose, but the critiquing of method, novel set-up, characterization, etc, made me incapable of writing anything because I was instantly analyzing before I had finished putting it down on paper! We need literary critics, and I also now think the book world needs us - we're the ones who love books, and pay our money for them, and we treat what we read with respect - even if we don't like a book, we give a thoughtful approach to why. And it's fun, it's like we have a huge book circle! Oprah, move over, the real book-reading world has far better choices about what to read! Hmmm,
and this is really odd - further signs of synchronicity - over at Neil Gaiman's journal site he has just written several answers to questions in the last week on creative writing classes and writing, and do they help or hurt writing? Oh....and he's gained "a tub' size in jeans, I'm not the only one this long long winter has affected!! Oh hurray!! very shallow of me, but hey, you have to read his description of his closet (see journal entry "snowdrops"....). note to self: must get a copy of "Odd and The Frost Giants" somehow......

- we really like fairy tales.

- it's really fun to sign up for challenges!!

- and even more fun to choose the books for each challenge!

- I got my sister to read Jane Austen for the first time through this blog! (Stand up, Lady P!!)

- Oh - Inkheart is getting better near the end, I'm almost finished!

- and the best of all, you, dear Gentle Readers. Meeting you, finding your blogs, sharing books and ideas and thoughts, I had no idea this was waiting for me. So, as I reflect on my first six months - I can't believe it's been only 6 months! - of blogging, I raise my milk bottle (baby blog can't drink yet...) to you in a toast - thank you - and I really thank all the writers out there, old ones and new, because without them we wouldn't have any books at all. And it's now 25 weeks, 2 days, 22 hours, and 35 minutes until *Neil's* next book, "The Graveyard Book" is out in the US (and hopefully Canada and the UK). :-)