Thursday, August 28, 2014

Beautiful Book #7


The Queen of Paradise's Garden, adapted by Andy Jones, illustrated by Darka Erdelji. Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides, 2009.

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was, not in your time, indeed not in my time, but in olden times, when quart bottles held half a gallon and houses were papered with pancakes and pigs run about with forks stuck in their backs seein who wanted a slice o' ham..."

It is not easy for a small press to make a beautiful book, as beautiful books tend to be pricey to produce and demand wide distribution to cover costs; and yet, Newfoundland's Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides is committed to great beauty bound in small, soft-cover form. Andy Jones, formerly of Codco fame, has spent the last several years adapting traditional Newfoundland folklore and has published three of these tales, Jack tales, with Running the Goat. A fourth one, Jack, The King of Ashes, will be released this fall. The tales are illustrated by Slovenian Darka Erdelji and the two of them together have performed puppet shows based on Newfoundland Folklore. 
 
Andy will be performing one of these puppet plays next summer as part of the Raddall Symposium at Acadia and I can hardly wait to see it. Maybe you might want to submit a paper proposal, if Atlantic Canadian Literature as it intersects with childhood interests you? http://english.acadiau.ca/tl_files/sites/english/resources/9thRaddallCFPbilingualMay2014.pdf

Here is a video trailer for the book narrated by Andy Jones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTamdtjg2Cw

And here is the FB page for Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Running-the-Goat-Books-Broadsides/372203296155988




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