Elizabeth Hopkinson's Hidden Grove

Welcome to the 2018 Fairy-tale Blog Hop. Thirteen fabulous fairy-tale authors have gotten together to talk about their favorite fairy tales. Follow the links at the bottom of each blog post to hop to the next author's website. Collect our favorite numbers to total up at the end and enter to win a print collection of our books! (There are several anthologies, debuts, and even an ARC for a BLINK YA book you can't buy in stores yet!) Dates: Contest runs  from Friday, June 22 to Friday, June 29  with a wrap-up party  at 7:00 EST . (details to come) Note: The grand prize winner will be contacted on Saturday. They have three days to confirm and send their address before the prize is offered to the next person. It's been five years since the publication of my historical fantasy novel Silver Hands . It's based on "The Handless Maiden" (also known as "The Armless Maiden" or "The Girl Without Hands"),  one of the fairy tales recorded an...

These are my thoughts on the Repeal of the 8th. I don't normally do this sort of thing on the blog, but I felt so helpless in the face of angry, hurtful comments that I had to put something into writing. And as I've written a lot about asexuality and so-called "monstrous births" on here, it didn't seem altogether inappropriate.   I have no desire to condemn women to illegal abortions. In fact, I have no desire to condemn anyone, full stop. I understand that abortion may be necessary in certain, extreme, circumstances, but there are several things that deeply trouble me.  1. The unborn have no human rights. In these days when we know more about the life and development of the embryo/foetus than ever before, and when mothers of miscaried babies are asking for death certificates, this seems both hypocritical and backward. I truly think the UN should convene to discuss what rights the unborn ought to have. I don't believe the unborn are the property of the mother ...

Who doesn't love Lettie Lutz, the Bearded Lady character in The Greatest Showman, who sings   the iconic anthem, This is Me ? Yesterday, my daughter took me to a singalong version of the film for a Mother's Day treat, and we both belted out This is Me at the tops of our voices. Both Lettie and the song have become symbols for anyone who feels marginalised or different. It so happens that last week I watched another film about a hairy woman, the very beautiful Norwegian coming-of-age film,   Løvekvinnen , or The Lion Woman, based on a book by   Erik Fosnes Hanson.   It tells the story of Eva Arctander, who is born in a small town in the early 20th century and struggles to find her place in the world. Especially, it concerns her relationship with her stationmaster father, widowed at her birth. I loved this film - which I watched on Netflix - and I definitely want to see it again. One of my best reads of last year was Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Bi...

On this blog, I have written a number of pieces about parthenogenesis and asexual reproduction. The first was this one: Giving Birth to Hairy Worms , which was inspired by a book called The Manly Masquerade. In it, I noted the Renaissance belief that reproduction could happen spontaneously, that things could be born of putrefaction, and that: Women's wombs could spontaneously produce all sorts of things, from monsters and harpies, to wood, glass or combs, to serpents, toads and hairy worms.  (I particularly like the hairy worms.  Why hairy??)  It seems this idea is less far-fetched than it seems, as today I was reading about homunculi. Rather than attempt to explain it myself, I direct you to this article: The Homunculus Inside . (Trigger warning: the photos are not for the squeamish!) It seems this would also be a good time to tell you that my articles on parthenogenesis (as well as my own experience of both asexuality and gynaecological problems) have insp...

Recently, I listened to a radio documentary called Two Thousand Years of Puzzling, tracing the history of the puzzle, from mazes to crosswords and everything in between. It mentioned Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - aka Lewis Carroll - author of the Alice books. Dodgson was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford, and loved a good mathematical puzzle. In fact, he seemed to love puzzles of every kind. Just thinking about Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass , I was struck by how many different types of puzzle feature in them. Here are some I noticed: Chess and Playing Cards. The main settings of the two books. Obviously, these are games, but there can be a lot of mathematics involved, and plenty of chess and playing card puzzles have been set and solved over the centuries. Riddles. The infamous, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Frustratingly, this one has no answer (although Jasper Fforde - that great Aliceophile - comes up with a few i...

It's almost 2018, and here I am with my Christmas/birthday book haul. Possibly the best ever. I thought I'd post this now, at the threshold to a new year and revisit it later when I've read all the books in the pile, so you can hear my verdict on them. So, here's the list: To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child.  Strange things happen when a husband goes to explore the interior of Alaska and his wife is left behind. At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald, author of my beloved Phantastes . Classic Victorian fantasy about a boy and a cab horse. The Paper Magician by Charlie N Homberg. First in a series about a student magician. The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo. A fairy-tale memoir of Finland and Sweden. Recently mentioned by booktuber Jen Campbell. The Less than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote by Dan Micklethwaite, one of my fellow Fogotten & Fantastical authors. A modern fairytale of the inner city. The Travellin...

Travellers in the Third Reich, Julia Boyd This week, I have been reading Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd.  It might sound like a grim read, but actually it's fascinating.  According to the blurb: Travellers in the Third Reich  is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including students, politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, journalists, fascists, artists, tourists, even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler – one so palpable that the reader will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere. And it's true.  You really do feel like you're there, all the way from 1919 to 1945.  What may seem incredible to some is that foreigners (especially British and American) kept on holidaying in Germany...