Mary Blair Googled!

Today would be Mary Blair's 100th birthday and to celebrate Google created a Google Doodle inspired by Mary Blair's art.  Very cool! 

Just wanted to mention again that I have a chapter in my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, on the Alice in Wonderland book that uses  Mary Blair's original artwork for the Disney film and Jon Scieszka's adaptation. That chapter essay, "Show Me, Don't (Re)Tell Me: Jon Scieszka Revisits Wonderland" is available in .pd format here.  Blair's work continues to show an amazing imagination but the usually funny and clever Scieszka seems a little intimated by adapating Carroll's work.  I'm working on a few other ideas related to Mary Blair's art as well.

Go Mary Blair! 

The Mary Blair Google Doodle.

more artwork from Mary Blair Disneyland exhibitFrom the Mary Blair exhibit at Disneyland in Summer 2011

Mary Blair exhibit at Disneyland & Matisse influences

Mary Blair's amazing artwork for Disney is the topic of the  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 17th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation lecture tomorrow night.  Looks like a fun, interesting panel the creators from Disney and Pixar who've worked on Toy Story 3, Monsters, Inc., Aladdin, Up, Pocahontas and more. Of course, the panel is already sold out, but it would be great to be a fly on the wall.

I'm fascinated by Blair's work. I included a chapter in my recent book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, about the re-working of Alice in Wonderland by Jon Scieszka using the art that Blair created for Disney as an inspiration for his animated film.  Not the best Alice adaptation because Scieszka doesn't bring his usual humor and confidence to Blair's dark and stylized work.

When we were in Disneyland during the summer, we were able to see an exhibit on Mary Blair's work.  I thought that the panel talk would be a good opportunity to post some of the photos from that exhibit.  The exhibit was near the entryway to Disneyland in the area on Main Street devoted to the history of Walt Disney and the theme park.  It's one of my favorite sections because the older Disneyland is the one that seeped into my imagination while watching the Sunday night Disney television and The Mickey Mouse Club.

Looking at the photos again, which are obviously not perfect photos, reminds me how much Mary Blair was inspired by Henri Matisse cutouts.

Matisse's La Tristesse du roi (Sorrows of the King), 1952Matisse is noted as saying "To look all life long with the eyes of a child."

Anfitrite, 1947The Eschimo , 1947

Share on Facebook

Mary Blair's "It's a Small World"

Mary Blair's artwork and creative ideas for Disney are legendery.  She had a modernistic, more abstract vision that Walt Disney appreciated but was very different from the drawings in his animated films that are rounder, softer in town and cuter, in a different way.  Blair is so revered at Disney that she is lauded in a special section of Disneyland's museum area as a Creative Innovator.  She's in a hall of luminaries that includes astronauts, inventors, politicians, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney and others.

A chapter in my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, has a section critically analyzing a book recently published by Disney that uses Mary Blair's conceptual art for Disney's Alice in Wonderland film along with a text loosely adapted from Lewis Carroll's by children's author Jon Scieszka.  Here's a link to a presentation, with images, based on that chapter.

For this blog on our Disneyland trip, I am posting photos of the "It's a Small World" ride to show what it looked like during the Christmas 2010-2011 season.  The music had been changed to an amalgam of the original "Small World" tune along with Christmas carols.  The dolls and scenery within the ride had been decorated for Christmas to reflect the different culture's Christmas, or end of the year, celebrations. 

A panorama of "It's a Small World" at night

Floating along the front of the ride, while going into the ride buildingThe clock area where the dolls come out and walk around.

Floating into the ride during the day

The ride during the day. It's much whiter and doesn't have the same presence within the park as it does at night.

Inside the ride the colors are bright, the dolls look rather cute, slightly dated but still charming and over the top.

The music is constantly playing, a little like treacle. Note the poinsettias and other holiday decorations

Just happy to be in front of "It's a Small World"

Share on Facebook

Talk like a pirate: read like a pirate

To Talk Like a Pirate, you must read about pirates.  Here's my list of 10 great books about pirates.

1. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  The incredible 1883 classic told, mainly, through the lens of young Jim Hawkins about his adventures with Long John Silver. 

2. Peter Pan; or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up by JM Barrie.  Part of the appeal of Barrie's 1904 novel and play is the tension between adolescent and adulthood.  That's the underlying theme -- the theme we think about, however, is the rollicking fun between Hook's pirate and Peter's Lost Boys.  Check out related film adaptations as well.

3. The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss.  The pirate attack is a key element in this 1812 novel about a proper family from Switzerland shipwrecked on island and trying to bring their own form of civilization.  Jules Verne wrote a sequel in 1900 called The Castaways of the Flag.

4. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Crusoe's classic adventures on the high seas in 1651 go wrong from the beginning when his ship is attacked by pirates and he becomes a slave.

5. The Pirates of Penzance; or The Slave of Duty by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.  This delightful 1879 comic operetta features the great song early on "I Am a Pirate King."  Our favorite version of the operetta, and we have seen probably 9 by now, is still the 1980s version with Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstandt and Rex Smith.  

6. High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes.  The 1929 novel is about a group of children kidnapped by pirates.  The boys and girls must defend themselves against the meanness and desires of the pirates.  

7. The Not-so-Jolly-Roger by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith.  For young readers who want a pirate adventure but may not be ready for some of the great novels on this list, try Scieszka and Smith's 2004 tale that's part of the lively and funny Time Warp Trio series.

8. The Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle.  How we imagine today what pirates looked like is still influenced by the detailed illustrations by American author and illustrator Pyle.  His Book of Pirates was published in 1921, 10 years after his death, and is a collection of several stories that he wrote and for which he created beautiful, detailed watercolors.

9. Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne. Three teen-age boys are kidnapped and live among the pirates in this 1857 novel that includes death, cannibalism, surfing, stealing and Christian missionaries. William Golding's 1954 Lord of the Flies, another intense novel about boys on an island, is a response to this classic Scottish adventure.

10. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.  Tom and his friends love playing pirates at home and on the island in the Mississippi River to which they try to escape from their childhood responsibilities.  As they do, their lives become more complicated in Twain's 1876 novel.  Try reading it aloud.

Update on Monday, September 19, 2011 at 01:53PM by JAS

On another Talk Like a Pirate Day, just wanted to write again that pirate literature continues to be a good way to get kids, especially boys, who are interested in pirates to get them interested in books and culture.  Even when our son was young, he could enjoy watching live and video versions of The Pirates of Penzance because he was so fascinated by pirates.  You might be surprised at kids' ability to tackle books that might be a little difficult to read if they are interested in the subject.  Let them start with Treasure Island, or find the graphic novel version and get them reading that way.