The Corpse Bride/ Credit: Warner Bros.Entertainment Inc. Did you know that Tim Burton's, stop-motion animated movie "The Corpse Bride" has Jewish bones? The Finger - A Russian-Jewish Folktale It's based on the Russian-Jewish folktale "The Finger" from the “Shivhei ha-Ari” ("Praises of the Ari", written in the 17th century), which collected tales about the alleged supernatural and magical feats of the (real-life) Rabbi Luria, 'proving' his mastery.  The stories are hagiographic legends — tales about a master that show his great powers. In the corpse-bride narrative, Rabbi Luri ..read more

"Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess" Credit: Studio Ghibli & the Ghibli Museum Did you know Miyazaki loves the tale of The Gingerbread Man? Japan has its own well-known version of this type* of tale - "Omusubi Kororin (Riceball rolls away)" - in which a rice ball rolls away**, and Miyazaki discovered similar tales across the world. They weren't variants - exactly - but he found many stories in different countries, in which, whatever the staple food of that country used to be, managed to get away. Either it got up after being baked or cooked and ran to have an adventure all b ..read more

I see you reading the headline and thinking: "Oh no. What is going to happen to Once Upon A Blog? It's barely been functioning the last few years and now it's going to change?!"  Don't worry. Unlike most social media "rebranding", I'm doing this the fairy tale way, and transforming the blog to be more of what I intended when I began it.  That means I'm staying "on mission" with the Once Upon A Blog content you've followed me for, for years, while allowing myself a little more flexibility to explore other avenues of Wonder.  You might be wondering, isn't Gypsy Thornton all about ..read more

Gina Pfleegor "Plot Twist" (oil paint on panel)  Gina Pfleegor is a "pop-surrealist" artist we've recently discovered, thanks to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine's RAYMAR Traditional Art Award contest, 2021, in which the delightful painting above was chosen as a finalist.  We adore the title: "Plot Twist", which is the perfect introduction to the series this painting belongs to.  While not focused completely on fairy tales, it's both fitting and not surprising to find fairy tales referenced; specifically, The Frog King, Beauty and the Beast, and Rapunzel ..read more

(Written by Tahlia Kirk, founder of Timeless Tales Magazine) I've been avoiding this announcement for months, but it's finally time. The TLDR is: I'm putting Timeless Tales into long term hibernation. I'm strongly considering shutting it down permanently or transferring ownership to someone new.  The backstory 2020 This is what's been going on with me behind the scenes: Back in March 2020, I was woefully behind with responding to Hades & Persephone submissions. I'd just landed a promotion at work that exponentially increased my responsibilities. When the big Covid lockdown hit, I wa ..read more

"Books are a uniquely portable magic." (Stephen King) You've heard this. You nod your head in fervent agreement every time you do. And you not-so-secretly wish to hold "portable magic" in your hands that you created. But - and this is a perfectly logical thought: if books are portable magic, do I need to be a witch or wizard to create one?  Yes. Yes, you do. And YOU CAN BECOME ONE. Writing books, especially ones that draw powerfully on folklore and fairy tales, seems like a special, magical talent, beyond the ability of regular mortals but here's a secret: if you're reading this ..read more

(Please note: credit not given on project page to identify the artist who created the banner)  "What if fairy tales of our childhood would have happened in old Japan?" That's the question put to a group of illustrators in Spain for a collaborative project in 2017, which makes for an interesting intercultural study of both fairy tales and Japanese folklore as seen and combined by outside peoples (both the stories, all of which shown here are referring to the German origin in the tales, even more than the American Disney lens, as well as Spanish interpretation of Japanese storytell ..read more

by Kristen Gould Happy Winter Solstice 2020! We've made it this far and not long to go till we get a whole new year... 2020 is a little extra special (yes, that too but this is a good thing, we promise), in that this year we have the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sky, creating the phenomena called The Bethlehem Star, which was able to be seen in the US after sunset, as well as a shower of shooting stars (meteor shower) that is due to begin being observed just after midnight. We won't go into the meteorological phenomena or the debate over what all these might mean, althoug ..read more

Positive representation of disability in literature is something that still needs working on, especially when it comes to children's books.  The more we normalize positive representation of disability - and the emphasis here is on positive, as well as on representation for disability in general - the more it helps all children accept difference as natural and develop an understanding that encourages inclusivity for many kinds of difference, including those with disabilities. It also helps those who are disabled not only feel seen as normal, included, and represented, but encourages thin ..read more

Not "1001",  just around 100, which is still incredibly huge, but then so is the Disney reach these days with all the recent company acquisitions of the past few years.  Thursday, December 10, was Disney Investor Day so there were project announcements from every entertainment arm of the company, which includes Disney Animation, Pixar,  Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and Lucasfilm Animation, National Geographic, Disney+, 21st Century Fox, ESPN, Hulu, FX Networks, and of course, the Walt Disney Studios. All the projects are set to air over the next few years, with a good portion of t ..read more