Getting Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce

     While reading Framed, I learned that the best way to embrace art is through the eyes of children. They always say what adults are really thinking! In the story, the children in the rainy, dying town of Manod, Wales are turned onto art when a swanky curator named Lester mysteriously takes over the old mine above their family gas station. He moves all the pieces from the National Gallery to the mine above their business to protect them a flood in London. The children convince Lester to get one piece of art out each week and show it to them before he puts it on temporary display at the gallery. Their impressions of each painting are so funny! Especially the one titled, "The Grotesque Old Woman" by Massys. When the children are wondering why anyone would paint such an ugly lady, one of them pipes up and says it's to make everyone looking at it feel beautiful!
        When all the people of Manod start showing up for peeks at the art, suddenly they start creating art and bringing their town back to life. After seeing Monet's "The Bathers", the local butcher gets all the old boats out, paints them and re-opens the lake to the public. When their mother sees Renoir's "The Umbrellas", she goes around passing out her thrift-store collection of colorful umbrellas and suddenly a "kaleidoscope snake" of people using them in the rain becomes a performance worth coming to Manod to experience. In hopes of keeping their town thriving, the children decide to stage a big art heist.



Visiting a slate mine in beautiful, rainy Wales - where their accents sound like Gaelic(Old Scottish) .......

Llechwedd Slate Caverns, Wales

.......and their flag is a dragon!! 

My new blogging buddy
Now, if he would just stop singeing the keys!

  

 To connect with the story, we visited the paintings in the British National Gallery. It was so fun to compare the children's descriptions of the paintings to our own. I thought it was so funny to see the "baby about to be tossed" on the Wilton Diptych. I was amazed at how bright the blues and golds are in real life! I had no idea that paint would stay so vibrant over so many years.....




Just in case you want to feel beautiful today..... 

Massys's Old Woman

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As You Like It - The Royal Shakespeare Company shakin' it up!

Rosalind and Orlando

How can you not love this goof, Orlando?

     Shakespeare - is either as you like it, or as you don't like it!  For some, the old English is so confusing, the play doesn't make any sense. BUT, if you humble yourself and read some of the summaries written for children, then you can follow the tone of voice and gestures of the actors and let yourself be amazed!  We read As You Like It for Kids by Marcia Williams and acted out the real script to get a feel for the characters and plot.
     The story begins with Orlando being jilted out of his inheritance by his brother, Oliver. To work out his frustrations, he accepts an impossible challenge to wrestle Charles (the hulk). He instantly falls in love with Rosalind when she congratulates him on his win. Earlier, Rosalind's uncle had thrown her father out and now angry over his prized fighter's loss, he throws her out, too. Rosalind and her cousin, Celia, run away disguised as a poor couple to find her father in the woods. Meanwhile, Orlando is searching for her and meets her in her disguise in the forest. She tests his sincerity  by getting him to profess his love for "his dear Rosalind". In her man's costume, she swears that "Rosalind" will appear at a wedding ceremony the following day where they can be reunited. Since all their friends also found love, the wedding ceremony becomes a four-couple affair and the confetti flies! Woohooooo!!

     What was really neat was the way the acting company modernized it and added extra elements of comedy without changing the script. At first, Oliver came out dressed in a slick business suit and the actors were just hilarious with their expressions and body movements. We were a little confused at times by Orlando's aggressive behavior towards Rosalind in the woods. We kept wondering why Orlando was all over "him" in the woods. Does anyone know if Orlando was in on the disguise all along? It may be the twist the acting company put on it to make us wonder....  Still, the wondering kept our attention on edge!

    This acting company was so fun, I imagine the original Shakespearean actors putting on this comedy would have been  extra silly as well.  

As You Like It was As I LIKED it!!

The farewell wedding celebration

Performed  at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, England by the Royal Shakespeare Company

disclaimer: due to photography restrictions in the theater, all images are borrowed and sourced below.




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Off with their heads!

 Can you imagine her here?

     A pleasant surprise about Oxford is that it not only had "the Inklings" (Tolkein, C.S.Lewis) teaching the ways of the world and the ways of "otherworlds" there, also the dean's little girls lived there. One of them was named Alice. While you may only know she ended up passing through a mirror and falling down a rabbit hole, did you know that Wonderland was below Oxford? Her father's office overlooked this beautiful grassy yard and tree....look familiar?

 

So tiny, she's at the bottom of the upper left pane

    


















Lewis Carroll must have had a lot of free time on his hands because he became friends with the girls and created the stories of Alice in Wonderland. Oxford is so proud of those stories because in one of the stained glass windows in the Great hall, there are images of Alice and all the characters bright as day in that dark hall of kings.

Move over Harry, Alice is in the house!

I think the Queen of Hearts is my favorite villain (sorry Voldemort! She's got the powa'!)

She had the mind of Henry VIII "Off with their HEEEEEADS!!"

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For the Rowling fans....

 

Hogwarts?

"The tube"

   I can't go to Oxford, England and not connect with one of their finest author's, J. K. Rowling. I have to be honest, although I'm not a fan of books where children become witches and wizards, I do love her writing style. She creates her own vocabulary with words like "quidditch" and villian names like "Voldemort" (which is French for Flight of Death). Her writing is so descriptive that when Voldemort finally revealed himself I was really creeped out! 

Platform 9 3/4 is REAL - this is at King's Cross station
You can get your picture wearing the scarf and pushing it!

 Her life story is equally inspiring - full of struggles that turned to success. She describes riding the train in England when she thought up the character Harry Potter and started his story. I am waiting for her next release and wondering what worlds she's creating at this moment.

Hogwart's (Oxford)  Stairs 

    

The Great Dining Hall

Oxford students really eat here among portraits of kings. I half expected an owl to swoop down on me!

Anyone want to go to Narnia?

Beautiful Oxford England!

 

   C. S. Lewis's home at "the Kilns" is not a museum, but a place where you can sit on the furniture, walk around the back pond, and stand in the little attic room where he would look over his flower garden and write. Students come there to study for months at a time and live in the rooms.
      At the time of his writing, Lewis was not well loved in England. He retreated into a world all his own. He loved to sit and smoke, drink tea, and have healthy discussions with his brother, Warnie, and his writing friends, "the Inklings"(Tolkien, Hugo Dyson and other philosophical types). They would work up "a good fog" of smoke and he would dump the ashes into the carpet  yuck! He let his house go to the point that restorers had to remove anything fabric!  It was Tolkien who convinced him to turn from Atheism and embrace Christianity during their long smoke-hazed, tea guzzling chats. I loved learning that Warnie also converted to Christianity at the same time, but he was out of the country exploring Buddhism. Both wrote each other a letter announcing their decisions, but the letters crossed in the mail!

Looking for the wardrobe...

     When he was young, he and his brother began making up stories about other worlds full of talking animals like "the world of Boxen" and the future world of Narnia was born. He had a home with pass-thru closets and built outside stairwell access to the upper room. Walking through his back garden, I expected an armor-clad rat to jump out and poke me with a little sword!  For C. S. Lewis, there was little else but world-making, playing scrabble with family in multiple languages, and meeting at the pub.  For some, there is no other life but the one you create.

Narnia....?

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." - C. S. Lewis

Tolkien and Lewis's pub

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Visiting Roald Dahl's BFG

The BFG? What's a BFG? If you have a fourth-grader around, you probably know the story of the Big

Johnny Depp's costume

Friendly Giant by Roald Dahl. Or maybe James and the Giant Peach? How about the Gremlins?  Okay then, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
Visiting the Roald Dahl museum  in Great Missenden, England opened my eyes to just how whimsical he was. He wrote everything by hand sitting in a yellow chair with a lap desk out in his little writing hut. They even have the hut: 

Chocolate door anyone?

The replica

The hut

The real deal

    What is impressive about Roald Dahl is that before he was a children's author, he was a war pilot who had been shot down and injured. His character, the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) speaks to children about humanity. The BFG explains to Sophie that she has to have faith to accept that some things do exist even they cannot be seen. He shows Sophie the secret world of the giants who have been stealing and eating children. Even though the BFG speaks with mixed-up words, he explains to Sophie that animals don't kill their own kind and points out that humans are the only creatures on earth killing each other. The story, full of creative names like "wizzpopper" and ideas like "dream-catching" ends with the simple Giant and little Sophie convincing the Queen of England to help them trap the giants.

The giftshop cafe has a BFG menu: Wizpopper hot cocoa 

And across the street is the Araminta Fizzackerly chocolate shop which originally was the Willy Wonka candy store.

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Bonjour! I have returned from England and France....

....from France where the culture is as rich as the food and England where history is living and breathing in the Buckingham and Windsor palaces. Blending literature, art and presence gave me a new perspective on how to really understand life. Peeking into C. S Lewis's dark, shadowy attic that appears in the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, then eating Turkish Delights or standing in the Tower of London at the exact place where Anne Boleyn was beheaded and buried are just some examples of the possible collisions of art, literature, and being there.
      I think my biggest connection was through Skyping with Jennifer Donnely about her book Revolution, going to the Palace of Versailles, and viewing Monet's debut impressionist painting "Impression Sunrise" which I will post my thoughts on being a revolutionary soon.
       That said, reading is still the easiest way to transport your mind.....Join me as I share some connections between literature and art from the land of the Brits and French.

Vive la littérature et de l'art !

(Long live literature and art!)