pumpkinstrokemarrow

Amused over the matinal tea to read about the Tate's Christmas effort. It seems that they hired a presently fashionable artist from the Institute of Conceptual Art (fees on application to http://www.conceptart.org/) to do their Christmas tree. He has come up with the amusing little idea, very retro, of erecting a regular Christmas tree in the Tate, rather like the one you or I might have had at home before we moved onto reproduction trees. Rubbish bins are out! Dame Trace consigned to the dustbin of history! The DT did not mention whether he has gone so far as to include real candles - as we did in the early sixties. I remember it being quite difficult to attach the candle holders to the tree in such a way that they would hold the candles upright. If he has, I imagine the H&S people will be a bit firm about not lighting them. Far too much like smoking in a public place. And the PR people will need to check that the candles have been sourced from carbon and animal friendly materials. You never know what sort of cranks might be creeping around the Tate at this time of year.

Nearer home I have been working on a different kind of retro, the Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. I have two versions, one the heritage variety, intended for people like me, the other the sort intended for use, the reading variety. The heritage one describes itself as original, which it clearly is not, but it is, I imagine, as close as they can get to the originals. Sewn binding. Superior reproductions of the original watercolours done at Norwich while the book as a whole was printed and bound in China. All under the auspices of Penguin Books, despite masquerading as the product of F. Warne & Co.. It seems that Beatrix got the story from North America, but it is still clear that she knew all about nature. Did more than just import the thing.

The reading one, from Ladybird, has been considerably tweaked. Most of the story seems to be there and most of the words, but there has been a lot of chopping and changing of sentences and their order. Not quite sure to what end, but presumably to move the style on from 1903 to 2003. I dare some some difficult words and constructions have been omitted or dumbed down. If I was serious about getting my M.Phol., I dare say I should pump them both into Excel and do some analysis. Word use, clause structure, all the sort of thing so loved by modern university English departments. An analysis which might demonstrate that the heritage author and the reading author were really two different people.

Perhaps next week.

Binding, paper etc not in the same league as Penguin. Much more bog standard affair. And whereas in the Penguin version, Beatrix is about the only authorial credit, in the Ladybird version you also have an adaptor, a designer, a photographer, an art director, a team of modellers and a painter of backgrounds. I think the idea has been to make the illustrations as much like what you might get on a childrens' program on television as possible. So instead of tasteful watercolours - which a second millennium child would possibly or even probably not relate to - we have soft toys for the squirrels, a plaster model for the owl, various accessories and painted backdrops. These are then assembled and photographed to produce the sort of illustrations that a thoroughly modern child is going to understand.