Hopefully this isn't too off-topic...

Thought you all might be interested in my website Girls Underground, which discusses a common story archetype predominantly found in YA fantasy books and films, but originating in fairytales and mythology.

"In which a young girl travels to an otherworldly place, far from home, where she is surrounded by strange creatures ~ some helpful and others very dangerous indeed ~ and must navigate her way past obstacles in time to defeat her adversary and reach her goal... gaining wisdom, power, and perhaps even love, along the way."

I've recently started up a related blog where I will be showcasing the many examples of the Girls Underground type - and today's entries included The Vege-Men's Revenge, which I posted about here as well.

My mom came across this amazing book and was nice enough to pass it on to me. This is the 1987 edition, but it was originally printed in 1897. It tells the story of Poppy, who is out walking one day, planning to harvest some veggies from the garden, when she is accosted by a couple of anthropomorphic vegetables. They sweet talk her into following them down underground to their kingdom, then surprise her with a condemnation of her previous vegetable-eating habits, and begin their revenge. They plant her in the ground, and tend her, and she grows into many different types of vegetable, all of which look like her (clothes and all). Then they pick the Poppy-veggies, cook them, and eat them! After the feast, they have a wild dance that flies around faster and faster until they all sort of explode in a bang - and it turns out to be all Poppy's dream (which kind of says something about the strangeness of Poppy's mind). It is awesomely weird, and kind of gruesome, and entirely relayed in rhyming verse.

( A few more pictures under the cut. )

i know we don't get a lot of 3-d work over here in storybookland, but i thought you guys would get a kick out of this.



( (where did you think chicken shacks come from?) )

Fantastic website just highlighted on the art blog Lines & Colors, which showcases original art portraits of a huge collection of the artist's favorite author or fictional character. Go check it out!


Neil Gaiman by Leigh Gallagher


Coraline & the Other Mother by Anna Hybsier

Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobbering Time!

Terrible Yellow Eyes is a collection of works inspired by Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

Also a great place for finding amazing illustrators, like Timothy Banks:



Awesome stuff and lots of it. Glee.


Straying over to related irrelevance: there's a Where the Wild Things Are movie coming out, by Spike Jonze (!?).

"The little sparrow is one of the most beautiful birds in the park. He's fast, too. When people drop crumbs of food, he is usually the first one there.

One morning he awakens to find that part of his beak has broken off in the night. Without it, he can't pick up food. It doesn't take long for the once-handsome bird to begin looking scraggly. As he gets weaker and dirtier, people don't want him around. The other birds don't, either.

A strange man living in the park -- a man as thin and dirty and unwanted as the sparrow -- becomes his only friend. What do they see in each other?

This short story, beautifully illustrated by Robert Ingpen, takes minutes to read. But its powerful message about people who are homeless and mentally ill -- or those who are simply different -- will linger with you for a long time."

--Washington Post, Kids Post Book of the Week

The first time I read this book I burst into tears. I was alone at the time. The second time I read it was to my class of 9 ESL students aged 7-8yrs. ( Read more )