With All Hallows’ Eve around the bend, a select series of crafters and artisans have decided to pay homage to our favorite novels, authors, poems, and fairy tales through the art of pumpkin carving. But the specimens below aren’t your regular, run-of-the-mill, home-carved jack-o’-lanterns. Replacing canvas with pumpkin and paint brushes with lino cutters, each piece presents a glowing portrait of an influential writer or a scene ripped from the pages of their works.Check out our gallery of mesmerizing jack-o’-lanterns that honor literary greats like Edgar Alan Poe, William Shakespeare, and the Brothers Grimm after the jump.
If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Maurice Sendak’s ultimate wild child, Max.
Everyone had a favorite book as a kid – you know, that tattered old thing you carried from room to room and made you parents read out loud to you over and over again, the one that you quoted until you were, um, a little too old to be doing so. We know our lives were shaped in part by the literature we loved as children, so inspired by this recent list of books every child should read, we got to thinking about what your favorite kids book back then might say about you now that you’re all grown up. Click through for our predictions, and do your best to take it with the grain of salt we intend – don’t worry, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lovers, we’re not really accusing you of advocating slavery. Be sure to add to the fun and make up your own in the comments!
1. Bill Murray will play FDR in an adaptation of the BBC radio play Hyde Park On the Hudson, which recounts the story of the president’s love affair with his distant cousin, Margaret Stuckley; the film will be directed by Morning Glory’s Roger Michell. [via Vulture]
2. Charlie Sheen and Snoop Dogg have reportedly laid down a track together. Maybe this means that Snoop will be coming along on Sheen’s live tour? [via Perez Hilton]
3. Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones will play Heather Locklear’s “younger hunky husband” in a new CBS comedy about life in Hollywood called The Assistants. [via Deadline]
4. Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak has reached an agreement with HarperCollins to publish Bumble-Ardy, the first book that he has both illustrated and written since 1981. If the title sounds familiar, it might be because it’s based on an animated segment for Sesame Street that aired in the early 1970s. [via UnBeige]
5. MTV has released the first official trailer for their Teen Wolf, and it’s just as angst and drama filled as you might have feared. [via io9]
Earlier this week Slate released their list of most influential octogenarians in America for 2010, highlighting men and women who are still culturally relevant in their 80s, 90s, and beyond (rock on, Wesley E. Brown). As with every year, there are plenty of “fresh old faces” (i.e. newly-qualified icons) as well as some veterans of the list. Assuming that most of you weren’t around for World War II, we’ve pulled together a cheat-sheet to Slate’s cultural relics in the arts — because while you might know who Maurice Sendak is, you probably didn’t realize that he was 4 months old when the stock market crashed in 1929.
According to a recent New York Times article, picture books are losing popularity as over-eager yuppie parents push their toddlers toward “big-kid” alternatives. Although illustrated stories by Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, and Maurice Sendak have continued to receive their widespread dues, children’s publishers have been forced to decrease their overall multi-media output and, in turn, the platform for new titles. In protest of this culturally impoverishing trend, here are five stunningly illustrated children’s books that are as engrossing and educational for kids of any age as their text-only counterparts.
The American Library Association has just released its list of most frequently challenged books of 2009. Lauren Myracle’s ttyl, which is written instant message format, topped the list for its supposed “unsuitability to age group” claim. Suddenly we found ourselves wondering about the books that made the list before emoticons lost their novelty — or even existed, for that matter. Check out a roundup of some of the most surprisingly “controversial” books from the original list, which debuted 20 years ago, after the jump.
With his Maurice Sendak opus Where the Wild Things Are set for DVD release on Tuesday, Spike Jonze took an evening to promote its splendid companion piece, Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak, due out the same day courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories. The fleet, 40-minute documentary, which originally aired on HBO last fall, is all about the octogenarian Sendak, eliding conversations that Jonze and co-director Lance Bangs had at chez Maurice over the past couple of years. It feels like a running dialogue with the illustrator extraordinaire, engaging you with the this-and-that of a remarkable life (his childhood, his obsession with death and the Lindbergh baby, his late, half-a-century-long partner Eugene Glynn) as well as how the personal seeped onto the page.
Just six months after the release of her most recent full-length, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Tori Amos is back with Midwinter Graces, her first holiday album in a career that has spanned two full decades. While the concept may seem a familiar one, Amos’ approach is far from it. Rather than simply put her spin on traditional holiday tunes, the piano woman radically reinvents the standards she takes on, rewriting music, adding and changing lyrics, and making them entirely her own. Supplemented by a number of new originals, the tracks here add up to far more than a Christmastime afterthought — this is an album that can stand up to any of Amos’ studio work, marked by complex arrangements, live orchestral contributions, and even the recording debut of the singer’s nine-year-old daughter, Natashya.
We caught up with Amos during a brief respite at home between tour legs to talk about the new record, her views on religion versus spirituality, and her upcoming musical, The Light Princess. Read our exclusive interview and listen to the new album after the jump.
The Wild Things is easily the best book ever adapted from a movie that was adapted from a picture book — but it also succeeds in its own right. Dave Eggers has written a novel that is deeply imaginative, slightly strange, occasionally dark, and ultimately touching. Keep reading for our take and a chance to win a furry copy of the book.
On some level, we know the story. (Weren’t we all exposed to Maurice Sendak’s Caldecott winner in childhood?) And the world Sendak evokes is so gripping that it is easy to forget that the original book was built around nine sentences. Eggers, however, has produced a work of 300 pages that naturally includes many, many more sentences. He uses the original for inspiration, but leaps off to create a world of its own.
, Tori Amos is back with 
, her first holiday album in a career that has spanned two full decades. While the concept may seem a familiar one, Amos’ approach is far from it. Rather than simply put her spin on traditional holiday tunes, the piano woman radically reinvents the standards she takes on, rewriting music, adding and changing lyrics, and making them entirely her own. Supplemented by a number of new originals, the tracks here add up to far more than a Christmastime afterthought — this is an album that can stand up to any of Amos’ studio work, marked by complex arrangements, live orchestral contributions, and even the recording debut of the singer’s nine-year-old daughter, Natashya.
