When I was just a little girl, an open book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Chat with readers about a childhood event that still sticks out in your mind, something you'd like to go through again.

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 Life feels pretty busy, hectic even, here in my fifties. I'm sandwiched between elder care and youth care, with my mother-in-law facing some mobility issues and my youngest kiddo learning to navigate life with EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, an auto-immune condition that affects strength and stamina). 

 Even though I left teaching a few years ago, it sometimes feels like every hour of my day is spent in service to others. I do it out of love, but that doesn't mean it's not wearing. 

So, I think I'd most like to go back to one of those seemingly endless summer days when I actually had time to get bored and felt like I had nothing to do. Maybe an afternoon sprawled out on the floor in the livingroom with a pile of comic books we'd just picked up at the local used book store spread out around me, enjoying a little snack plate my Mom provided before she also flopped down to read. We can just sit there for a while, reading companionably together. 

Sounds pretty darn good about now. 

How about you? Something in your childhood you'd like to revisit, experience again? I'd love to hear about it in the comments! 

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Teacher-Writer-Mom, an Open Book blog post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

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I'm that rare and odd creature: the person who became what they said they were going to be when they were a kid. I would occasionally flirt with other ambitions, catching an enthusiasm from a book or a movie. There was my brief affair with archaeology, and my short-lived interest in law, but I always circled back to the trinity: 

Teacher-Writer-Mom

I was about 5 when I decided I was going to be a teacher, a writer, and a mom. I announced it to my family at a holiday party. Everyone nodded sagely and went back to their cigarettes (it was the 70s). 

I loved school, books, and kids, so it seemed like a no-brainer to me. Of course, my vision of what being any of things was like was, well, less than accurate. I had no idea how overwhelming all three of those roles can be individually, let alone wrapped up into a single person-sized package. 

I imagined that teachers got paid to play with kids, that writers got paid to make up stories. I knew moms didn't get paid, but they still got to hang out and play with kids all day, so it couldn't be all bad. I'd have plenty of money from teaching and writing, right?

With that childish understanding of money and time, I assumed I'd have a lovely country estate with a tower room to write in and someone tending my garden and horses, and plenty of energy to handle all of these things. 

But I did do them all…eventually. 

Just not all three of them at the same level all the time. 

I got my first teaching job fresh out of college and continued to teach for 27 years before I left the career for something less stressful and more lucrative (I'm a Content Strategist for a big financial company now). 

I had my first kid when I was in my late twenties, and started to scale back my teaching a little. I volunteered for fewer extras, streamlined to try to lessen the amount of work I took home every night. But then I was doing two of the three: teaching and momming. Sometimes I wrote. 

I had my second kid in my mi-thirties. I scaled back my teaching even more. I gave up teaching English and began teaching beginning Spanish which had a lighter paper grading load and could more easily be forced to stay within working hours only, if I was disciplined. Sometimes I wrote

Throughout all those years, I always wrote, off and on, when the mood hit me, when I could steal the time and focus. But it took me a while to get around to finishing and publishing things, in part because of teaching and momming. There are, after all, only the 24 hours a day. 

But I started taking it seriously when I was 42. And that was another rebalancing, taking time for myself, and negotiating space for a writing life with my career and family. I guess I'd built up a head of steam, though, because once I committed and focused, I got my first book contract with two years, and I've worked steadily ever since. 

Here we are 10 years later, and I've got 41 titles to my name, counting all the editions: everything from short stories included in anthologies, to novellas, to novels, and even a poem or two. 

My Amazon page

I did it y'all: I'm a teacher-writer-mom, even if I technically don't teach for a living anymore. 

How about you? What did you imagine for your adult self when you were a child? Is that what happened? 

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My Favorite Bookstore, an open book blog hop post

  

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Do you have a favorite bookstore? 

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I do love a good bookstore, but I have to be careful of going too often if I want to stay in the black financially. I'm especially a sucker for bookstore/coffeeshop combos. 

It all started when I was a college student in Morehead, Kentucky and found Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky. 

This was 1990, so the "big box" bookstore wasn't such a common thing. Borders hadn't yet made it to my part of the country and I'd never even heard of Barnes & Noble yet. My hometown of Bellevue, Kentucky hadn't had a bookstore in years, since the one we frequented when I was a child closed. But Jo-Beth was heaven on earth, a palace for books and probably responsible for my first maxed out credit card. 

These days, I'm not such a fan of the big ones, though they serve their purposes. I'm more interested in small, personally owned and operated bookstores. You know, indies. :-) The quirkier, the better. 

There are a few near me and I love them all for different reasons: 

• Purple Crow
• Flyleaf
• Epilogue
• Golden Fig
• Quail Ridge
• The Regulator
• Letters

I've probably forgotten a few. What's key for me is something hard to define, the "vibe" of a place. 

I don't want to feel hurried, but nor do I want it to be difficult to find something when I'm looking for something in particular. The staff should be pleasant to interact with and never respond with snobbery or disapproval about any requested book. It should feel like everyone, the workers and shoppers alike, enjoy being there. 

My current favorite might not actually be one near me, but one near my parents' house. Roebling Books in Dayton, Kentucky. There are three of them in the northern Kentucky area, but the Dayton one is the one I like best. Unusual books on offer, lovely treats in the coffeeshop (that babke!), an old building that had been left unloved too long and has now been made special, and very cool and kind staff. 

It's been weird, watching Bellevue and Dayton transform from the more blue-collar towns they were in my childhood into quaint shopping districts for the denizens of giant condos that no one I grew up would have been able to afford. Mostly, I'm ambivalent at best about all the development and change, but it's great to see a building come back to life and add value to the community, which Roebling definitely does. 

I'm always seeking out the bookstore, wherever I travel, and I'm always glad I found the place where the readers are, because that's always the coolest place in town. 

What makes your favorite bookstore special? 

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Mom, my first teacher and audience: an open book blog hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Who was the first person who believed in you?  

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I have been lucky to have support for me as a person and me as a creative from the get-go. My first cheerleader was (and still is) my mother. 

From the very beginning, she fostered my interest in reading and writing, taking me to the library, running to catch the book mobile, taking me to the used book store on the avenue and letting me spend some of her precious and limited monthly book budget, sharing her own love of story. 

It takes a special person to support the writing of a child--to understand the balance of praise and pushing to do something better. My mom really *got* me as a creative and exercised such patience as I told her my stories and wrote those early poems. She has been my first audience and teacher wrapped up in one. 

My mom, in the magic light, on our trip to Ireland in 2022.

One could definitely argue that I wouldn't have become a writer if I hadn't had my mother, or at least that it would have been less likely. 

My family has been very supportive in general--my dad, my sister, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my grandparents and then my husband and our children, too. When I see how hard some of my writing friends have had to fight for their writing lives, I know I am lucky beyond the pale. 

How about you? Did you have to fight for your creative self? Or did you find support when you needed it? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. 

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My Author Origin Story: An Open Book Blog Hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What's your author origin story?  

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In some ways, I've always been a writer, at least since I could actually hold a pen or pencil and physically write. My first poems were written when I was only six, in first grade. "Beauty is in the great, tall trees/bending over in the breeze" and stuff like that. 

In other ways, I've only been an author for a decade or so, starting when I panicked a little over the idea that I was turning 42 and still hadn't written a book, then committed to a daily writing habit, and started finishing things, submitting them, and getting published. 

But the important part of my author origin story isn't in the exact details. This heroine's journey begins with reading. 

The first book I can remember loving was a collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. It was a tall, slender volume with a blue cover. I had to lay it down on the floor and stretch out my arm to turn the pages. By the time I was three years old, I had it memorized, down to what words went with what page turns, and convinced my grandmother that I could already read (I couldn't--I just knew that book by heart). 

I had a pretty healthy collection of Little Golden Books as well, since that was my bribe for being a good girl at the grocery store. I'd put up with a lot for the promise of a new Little Golden Book. 

When I got a little older, Mom and I (and little sister, when she came along) became regulars at the library. I was such an enthusiastic little reader that the book mobile ladies would hide books under the seat for me so they'd still be available when they got to my house even though we were one of the last stops. To this day, I am grateful to my library and librarians for all the worlds they opened to me through their shelves. 

But yes, reading was definitely my conduit into writing. I'd make up other endings or additional adventures for stories I loved, and over time I started writing them down. Really, it's no surprise to anyone who knew me in childhood that I grew up to be a writer. 

Writing sometimes feels to me like reading notched up to eleven. If reading lets me walk in someone else's shoes, writing lets me wear their skin and look out through their eyes, imagining all the details of a life very different than my own. It's one of the great joys of my life and I hope to enjoy it for many years yet to come. 

How about you? Do you have an origin story for your heart's endeavors? I'd love to hear about it in the comments! 

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Anne? Pippi? Nancy? Madeline? Ferdinand? An open book blog hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

If you were a beloved children's character, which ones would you be? 

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Now that's an interesting question. Am I meant to say which character I think is the most like me? Or more like which character would I like to be? Both, you say? Sure! Why not both!

As a child, I was very much like Anne of Green Gables fame. I was always getting in trouble for daydreaming, a little quick to take offense, and very much following my heart. 

I even had freckles, reddish hair often worn in braids, and a propensity for books and straw hats. 

Honestly, I haven't changed that much. I've just figured out a way to channel my daydreaming into writing, and to go a little slower before I fly off the handle. (Probably much like Anne herself did as she grew up, come to think of it). 

So that's who I am like, but then who would I like to be, given the chance? 

Should I be content to be who I am, no matter what others seems to think, like Ferdinand the bull? Smart, brave, and helpful like Nancy Drew? Self-sufficient, independent, and unable to be cowed like Pippi Longstocking? Loyal and fierce like Madeline? 

I don't think I can pick. How about you? Is there a children's book character you especially identify with? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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What kind of muppet are you? An Open Book blog hop post

 Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

If you were a muppet, what would you look like? Are you a person, monster, animal, something else? 

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What a fun question! I've always had an affinity for Kermit, so maybe I could be added to his family. I mean, he's got a nephew already, right? How about a niece? 

Oooh---oooh! Or maybe I could join The Electric Mayhem. They certain have some diversity of appearance.

image source

I think my multi-colored hair would fit right in…and I'd get to hang out with Animal, one of my favorite muppets. 

Honestly, I'd take any role the creators wanted to give me, just for the privilege of hanging out with my childhood heroes. How about you? Can you see yourself as a muppet? If so, what kind? 

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I wish I could…An Open Book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What skill do you wish you had, either as a hobby or a career builder? 

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I wish I could sew. It comes up a lot--repairs and alternations to clothing, making useful household things. Sadly, I just don't have the hand dexterity (arthritis) and these days, the eyesight isn't what it used to be either. 

When I was a kiddo, my mother made all my clothing. I later learned that this was as much out of saving money as it was out of love, but, as a kid, I just knew how special it made me feel that I had unique items crafted just for me. 

I guess the good news that I'm not dripping in remnants of fabric and bric-a-brac, trying to figure out how to fit my hobby in my house like some of my friends who sew are! 

How about you? What do you wish you could do? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below. 

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Saturdays with Godzilla, a Open Book Blog Hop Post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Is there a movie from childhood that still holds a special place with you? 

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I enjoyed a variety of television and movies with my family when I was a little one, but I think the ones that give me the biggest warm fuzzies are Godzilla and other kaiju movies, like Gamera and Mothra. 

My dad and I used to watch them together. The silliness of the rubber suits undercut the scariness of the destruction (poor Tokyo--destroyed over and over again).  We'd sit together eating popcorn, laughing and fascinated in turn. Mom would tease us about our bad taste in movies. I have very fond memories of those Saturday afternoons, still in my pajamas after lunch, sitting with my dad, cheering for monsters.

I still love kaiju movies to this day. In fact, I'm now sharing that love with the next generation. A local theatre is bringing all these old films to the big screen again as part of Kaiju-Quest and we try never to miss one!

image source

Godzilla has been reinterpreted and rebooted many times, and through this movie series I'm getting a new view into the craft, politics, and philosophy that underpin these monster flicks. Of all of them we've been the cinema to watch, I think my favorite was Destroy All Monsters! I suspect it's because so many of the monsters were together in a single film. It almost felt like a family reunion (though there's less destruction of landscape at MY family reunions). 

What movies from your childhood still strike a chord with the adult version of you? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

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The Dangers of Revisiting Foundational Books

Some friends and I were talking the other day about books that we have loved since childhood/youth, and the trepidation that comes with re-reading them as adults. 

What is they're not as good as you remember? What if--even worse--they're not very good at all? Is it better to just let them glow in your memory rather than risk tainting that warm, happy place in your heart that they hold? 

What do you think? 

Some books I have revisited and how it went: 

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. When I read this as a child, it was a game-changer for me. It was one of the first times I really saw myself in a protagonist. 

Meg wasn't pretty, perfect, sweet, or nice. But she was smart and fiercely loyal to those she loved. 

I read it again as an adult a couple of years ago, when my classics book club picked it. We tend to read a "children's classic" each December. 

Overall, it held up well. The witches are still wonderful, Meg is still grumpy and difficult and complicated, the Nothing is still terrifying, as are all those organized children bouncing balls in unison.

It was more overtly Christian than I had remembered, and that was a little off-putting, but otherwise, still good. I read it out loud to my teenager, who also really enjoyed it, so getting to share something that mattered to me with someone who matters to me was a nice bonus.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson was one of those moments when something I read in school really got to me. 

That didn't happen all that often. A lot of what I was asked to read in school was very safe, and kind of boring. 

But this short story was unnerving, disturbing, visceral and…I loved it. 

In fact, I fell in love with Shirley Jackson's work with that story and it led me to two of her novels in my school's library: The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 

Both of those remain among my favorite books to this day and I have read them both several times. Obviously, I must think these hold up well if I keep going back. Jackson's characters are complex and dark. She really highlights the horror in ordinary situations. 

Here lately, I've been reading some of her other work, stories that aren't horror-adjacent, and they're amazing in similar ways. Jackson always leaves me thinking. 

Another author I loved in my younger years was Ray Bradbury. And, in some ways I still do. Such creative imagery, such imagination. 

Again and again, he has amazed me and filled me with wonder and delight, especially in his short stories. 

But, recently I read Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes. 

And, well…the women. 

Both of these books portray women with 1950s paternalism at best, with a pat on the head and a "sit over dear and don't worry your pretty head." 

At worst, it's outright misogyny. 

Mildred Montag, the wife of the main character in Fahrenheit 451, is a caricature of the most insulting nature…and yes, I'm aware that he's exaggerating on purpose to highlight how bad a world without books really can become. 

But no male character is portrayed with the same antipathy. No male character descends into such utter inanity. And plenty of other books from the same era (and even older!) do a better job with female characters, so I'm not giving him a pass for being an old guy either. Bradbury could have done better and should have. 

Clarisse, our most sympathetic female character, isn't much better. She is just shy of a manic pixie dream girl, only in the story as a catalyst to our male lead. In fact, after she inspires his insurrection, she is promptly killed off--practically fridged. 

Plus, she's seventeen, so there's a squick factor for me with the suggestion of romance between them. Reeks of those literary novels about aging professors who find their joy in life by screwing an undergrad. Yuck!

Gotta say, all that sailed over my head when I was a teenager, but it's much harder to see past now. 

Have you revisited any books that you loved in your youth? How did it go? Do they hold up? I'd love to hear about your experience in the comments! 

Disney+ Project: Part 9: the 1980s

More Disney! (See our earlier thoughts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here)

We've hit a few Disney movies I hadn't seen in this batch. While I remember The Fox and the Hound through a veil of tears, I had never seen The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, or Oliver and Company. I'm guessing it's because I was a young teenager right as they came out. I'm sure I thought I was "too old" for "kid cartoons." Luckily I grew out of that misconception not long after. I was looking forward to seeing Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid again. 

I still know *all* the songs in the Little Mermaid. For me, that's when Disney became a double threat hitting my musical nerd and fairy tale fan buttons all at the same time.

My daughter had seen NONE of these, though she's familiar with the music from The Little Mermaid since our middle school put it on as a musical a year or two ago.

So here's what we thought of 80s Disney:

Fox and the Hound: We knew we were set up for heartbreak from the outset. Heck, Todd's mother didn't last as long as Bambi's! We sat and talked about this one for a while when it was over because it was pretty morally complicated.

The hunter and his dogs weren't just simple villains (though the movie is pretty solidly anti-hunting), but what hope was there for the doomed friendship between natural enemies? And what a bittersweet ending. Way more adult and nuanced than we were expecting.

The Black Cauldron: So, is Gurgi actually Smeagol? The vocal resemblance was uncanny, even down to some of the lines (munchies and crunchies? talking about himself in the third person?) This Disney film had a very different feel than any of the previous ones. It wasn't a musical--no songs at

all, actually. It was darker and more directly scary than any of the others, too. We found it a little sloppy in building character arcs, so lacking in the emotional impact it might have had, but definitely worth seeing. While we enjoyed it, it didn't feel like a Disney movie to us.

The Great Mouse Detective was definitely more for me than for my twelve year old. She knows who Sherlock Holmes is only vaguely, and certainly didn't know about Basil Rathbone, so some of the Easter Eggs remained hidden for her, while I was cackling with inner glee. We both love Vincent Price, though, and he was magnificent as Ratigan. Still she found our Dr. Dawson charming in the same way as The Rescuers' Bernard. A very satisfying little gem we would watch again.

Roger Rabbit, too, was filled with references that went right over my girl's head. She's not steeped in noir like I am. 

On the other hand, she is a fan of old animation, so she had a blast identifying old characters as they wandered through and where they are from. We were both so pleased to see Betty Boop. 

When I watched this one for the first time (when it was new), I had not predicted the big bad guy reveal until just before it happened, and I was pleased that my daughter didn't guess ahead of time either. She's far too good at guessing where a story is going, so she's hard to surprise with a twist!

We were both lukewarm on Oliver and Company. We liked the relationship between Fagin and the dogs, and Sikes was a strong villain, but the whole thing just felt a little lackluster. Maybe too polished? It's the first time Disney used established singers like Billy Joel and Bette Midler as opposed to voice actors. It didn't feel like the characters were singing the songs, but like they were lip syncing, if that makes any sense. In fact, writing this now, a few days later, I can't remember a single song from the film. I guess music is a bigger part of what we love in Disney than I realized. 

That made The Little Mermaid truly welcome. It's the first of a new style of Disney princesses that dominated the 1990s and still continues today: spunky women with agency. 

It really feels like a stage musical, too, hitting all the expected notes: a yearning ballad for our heroine, a gloating moment for the villain, a comedy number (the cook), a setting piece (Under the Sea), etc. 

Instead of the musical numbers being a break from the action as they often were in older films, the songs are the major vehicle for the emotional highpoints. We're only missing the hero and heroine singing their love together, but in most of the screentime they share, her voice is stuck in a seashell, so there are some limits there. 

My daughter commented repeatedly on how strange Ariel looks--giant headed with shockingly skinny arms, ridiculously small waist, etc. I have to agree--even in a long field of unrealistic portrayals of female bodies, Ariel stands out (swims out?) as ridiculously proportioned. 

And, as a Greek mythology buff, my girl was confused by this version of Poseidon, who seems to be less of a god of the sea and more of just the king of the merpeople, but who has some of Poseidon's traditional attributes and powers. 

But we really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to enjoying 1990s Disney with her. 

Plus Sides to the Pandemic at la Casa Bryant

I lean towards optimism in most circumstances, trusting that time and energy spent can improve most situations. At least I believe that nothing gets any better if you don't try something.

Looking at our leadership in my country right now, holding onto that optimism has been harder. But at least I'm in this with an intelligent and thoughtful partner, who has a very useful skillset for managing an isolationist life for a while.

And we're lucky, truly, on a lot of fronts. We're all still healthy. Both adults are able to work from home and are still being paid. The kiddo at home is introverted and digitally connected to her friends, so is handling social distancing pretty well for someone her age. The dog is old enough to appreciate a slow life.

So, looking to the sunny side: here are some plus sides to the pandemic at our house.

1. We're playing with our toys. Over the years, we've collected a lot of them: video games, board games, legos, musical instruments, books, craft supplies, DIY project tools, recipe books, etc. An embarrassment of riches really: more than we can realistically use.

But with extra time at home, we're digging into all these wonderful things and enjoying them. Go past us! For buying things even though we didn't have time for them? At least we're occupied now, without having to shop while we're money worried.

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#funinthewoods with #mygirl today. #natureheals #sunshine

A post shared by Samantha Dunaway Bryant (@samanthabwriter) on Mar 20, 2020 at 4:17pm PDT

2. We're getting out in nature more. I'm a walker. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that my feed is full of pictures of beauty I spot on my daily nature walks. It's my main stress relief.

Because I'm a teacher and my hours are early, even during the winter months, I can usually make it to a trail with a little daylight left to burn. But, my daughter is not so much a walker, and my husband isn't usually home in daylight, so it's usually just me and the pup.

But, without commutes to worry about and with the kiddo legit needing a stretch of the legs, we're able to get out into the woods together. It's a real joy to me to share this love with my people (and still the pupper).

3. Lots of family time. My husband and I have been feeling the rush of time whooshing past us in recent years, as our baby turns into a teenager and our older child becomes an adult.

We've struggled to arrange our days so that we get time together as a family, time for each of us with our daughters, time for just the two of us, etc. all while still holding down demanding day jobs and handling the business of the household.

It's been lovely to be right there for our daughter when she hits a bump in completing her school-from-home assignments, to help her problem solve or just be amazed by how well she does this on her own.

We're playing games and watching shows together. We're really in tune with how everyone is feeling and doing a good job balancing the needs of each of us.

I think we'll miss this part when the speed of life picks back up.

4. The house is getting cleaner and better organized. When it's time to "take a break" from our work from home situations, we're each handling household tasks: cleaning up messes that have been allowed to linger, changing out loads of laundry, running the dishwasher, re-organizing storage situations, sorting things, etc.  It gets us moving and clears mental space as well by making our surroundings more pleasant.

It's lovely to slip these tasks into down moments of the work day, instead of struggling to do them *after* work when we're exhausted and wanting some relaxation and more playful togetherness.

We're even making progress on our giant attic project (building an entire new room up there for game storage). The supplies were mostly already purchased, and now we can repurpose that commuting time for mudding, sanding, and (hopefully soon) painting!

5. We're eating better. We're planner-aheaders, the sort of people who usually have a deep freeze full of meats and boxes and cans lining the shelves waiting for use. So, without panic shopping or hoarding, we've stayed pretty well supplied.

Since I'm not coming home from school emotionally and physically exhausted from managing 160 children across the day, our dinners have become more luxuriant affairs, rather than the "what can I make in 30 minutes that is palatable?" trick we'd mastered so well.

So, new recipes, and old favorites that "take too long" for a school night. Cooking together because we're all there. Dancing to music while the potato pancakes fry. I'm enjoying the prep time as much as the eating.


What's a plus side to isolation time for you and yours? Anything you'd like to hold onto when life returns to something more like normal? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Disney+ Project, Part 8: the 1970s

More Disney! (See our earlier thoughts here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)

Welcome to the 1970s in Disney animation. We've finally reached films that were made during my lifetime. While Disney has often echoed its earlier work, using the same voice actors or animators or a similar style, that seemed especially obvious in these films, which is something my daughter and I both enjoyed. 

We delighted in hearing Phil Harris (Baloo of Jungle Book) as Thomas O'Malley and Little John; Eva Gabor as Duchess and Bianca; Pat Buttram as Napoleon, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Luke the Swamp Mouse; Sterling Holloway whom we'd already admired as Mr. Stork, Flower, The Cheshire Cat, and Kaa, returning in the 1970s as Roquefort and Winnie the Pooh. 

My daughter is interested in voice acting as a possible future career, so we make special note of those performances and these voice actors were so much a part of the soundtrack of my childhood that I feel that warm and gushy rush of nostalgia whenever and I hear them. 

We also saw a lot of visual echoes, with familiar animal shapes in chase scenes from Robin Hood and the Rescuers, and Cruella de Vil's seeming cousin Madame Medusa. 

Three of our four selections had couples that crossed "class" barriers: Duchess and Thomas, Robin and Maid Marian (in Disney's version, there's no mention of Robin being nobility--he's just some guy), and Bianca and Bernard. 

The music of the Aristocats is similar to the tunes from Jungle Book in the jazz influence, too. My daughter and I enjoyed that "Easter egg" feeling that spotting these connections and echoes gave us. 

In case, you haven't read the other posts, the basic project is that my 12 year old daughter and I are watching all the Disney animated features in chronological order since Dad got us Disney plus this winter. We're using the wikipedia list and so far there have been only a few that weren't available on Disney Plus: Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons, Victory Through Air Power, Make Mine Music, Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, and The Sword and the Stone (which we found from another source and watched). So, we've watched 23 films so far.

So how do the 70s stack up?

Story-wise, we found these less problematic. While Duchess was a bit of a damsel in distress, Marian and Bianca have serious backbone and a sense of adventure.

The films were mostly free of "ick" moments of leering men and voluptuous women or racial stereotyping or outright offensive portrayals as we'd found in earlier films. They still play well to twenty-first century women like us. We weren't pulled out by outmoded references or outdated humor like we sometimes were with earlier flicks.

Animation-wise, production seemed a little less careful. Thomas O'Malley in the Aristocats looked like a completely different cat in some scenes, especially when he was supposed to be frightened. He changed shape and size throughout. We were pretty sure we spotted some repeated footage in Robin Hood and the Rescuers, like you might see in a Hanna Barbera production, a sign of cost-cutting.

In contrast Winnie the Pooh was highly creative with its use of the text of the books as part of the animation and breaking of the fourth wall as characters interacted directly with the narrator and seemed to know they were in a story.

So far as animation sequences, we loved Tigger sliding down the words on the page when the narrator shook him out of his tree and the opening sequence where a book is opened and all the drawings begin to move. Or when Pooh Bear bounced on lines of text. It was fun how this feature in particular kept reminding you that it was really a storybook.

Even though, she came in to this one expecting she might be "too old" for it, my daughter really enjoyed the sweet stories and fun characters. She thought a lot of the denizens of the Hundred Acre Woods reminded her of her own friends. It's a low stress cartoon that feels very soothing, in the same way that Totoro has been for her throughout her childhood: something you watch when you want something calm.

The 70s get a bad rap sometimes artistically as an era of tacky exploitation and low production values, but we felt these films are still well-worth seeing.

Disney+ Project: Part 7: later 1950s into 1960s

More Disney! (See our earlier thoughts here, here, here, here, here, and here)

At last our Disney+ Project has come to the heart of the films that I remember and love best from my own childhood. All of these were still made before I was born, but there are also all films that I've seen repeatedly, on the big and small screens, on VHS, on DVD, as a child, an adult, and a mother. Lady and the Tramp is one of my earliest favorites, softie that I am for dogs, and Jungle Book was my oldest daughter's favorite--practically all she watched for nearly an entire year when she about two years old.

My youngest daughter had seen Sleeping Beauty, but none of the others.

In fact, until we started this project, she's always been kind of anti-Disney, at least the princesses. When we moved into this house, the room that was hers was lined with a Disney Princess border presumably chosen by another little girl who lived there before her. She was more of a Ninja Turtles girl at the time, and she always hated that border. Although she did have a dress up dress or two that came from the Disney collection, she just never got into the princess culture. She's a rebel that way--liking to find things to like that people are surprised by. (Does that mean she's a hipster?)

Makes her a fun viewing companion for sure.

So, our short-takes on these films:

Lady and the Tramp: Still charming! The spaghetti scene is totally adorable and you knew Tramp was a goner when he nosed that meatball over to Lady. I still cried when Trusty was seemingly dead--even though I knew he wasn't really.

My daughter overall liked it, too, enjoying the neighbor dogs and getting angry at the Auntie who muzzled and chained Lady because she was a cat person and didn't get it. She was also completely charmed by the spaghetti scene.

The Siamese cats are pretty horrifying in the same way the crows from Dumbo were--full of outmoded racial stereotypes. In a movie where all the other animals talk perfectly well, they speak a pigeon English, that coupled with the faux Asian music is truly cringe-worthy.

The 50s definitely left their stamp on the gender dynamics at play. The female is there to tame and civilize the male who will settle down now that he's had time to "sow his wild oats." (insert gagging sound). At least they both do seem genuinely happy at the end, leaving you with a feeling that theirs is a romance that will last. I wonder what Tramp's midlife crisis will look like?

Sleeping Beauty didn't hold up as well story-wise.

Animation-wise, it was really interesting--maybe the most interesting in that regard of this batch of movies. There's a scene where Aurora is laid out after touching the spindle where the blanket and draperies in the room look so real you can touch them, even though the characters themselves don't look any more realistic than past animated humans. "Illuminated manuscript" touches throughout make it a stunner visually (Aurora's hair in some scenes!), and Maleficent in dragon form is still scary!

But there's a lot of too-stupid-to-live going on. Neither my daughter nor I like stories where, in the name of protecting some young female character, we keep her ignorant and isolated. Well, duh! If you don't teach her anything about the dangers surrounding her, of course she's going to fall for it!

Rather than destroying all spinning wheels, how about we teach her about them and directly tell her that it's a bad idea for her to touch one?

Instead of sending her off into the woods to live with three sweet, but incompetent fairies, how about her parents get to raise the child they wanted so very badly? My daughter in particular found that ridiculous. They never actually get to be parents--their child is sent away as an infant and comes back a bride.

If we know her 16th birthday was the danger day, then why on earth was she alone for even a single second on that day? She's a princess, for goodness sake! There are any number of servants, guards, knights, and other kinds of workers that might have intervened.

On the other hand, it was nice that she and her prince met without knowing who each other was and fell in love. Very romantic in that "meant to be" kind of way so appealing in fairy tales.

The three fairies were cute as heck and sometimes very clever (when they weren't being too stupid to live--like going from no magic to spewing magic lights out the chimney while they argued about dress color).

Maleficent is magnificent. (I still haven't watched the live action movies, BTW, because I like Maleficent being evil without explanation; I don't have any desire to learn and empathize with causes or to see her redeemed--sometimes it's good to just have a straight-up, old-fashioned villainous villain!) Eleanor Audley's voicework was stunning--and the kiddo noticed it was the same actress who'd done Cinderella's stepmother. Good ear!

After Sleeping Beauty, it was back to the dogs with 101 Dalmatians.

This might be our favorite of the group, at least for story. From Pongo's match-making beginning to the cross country adventure to save the puppies pulling in an entire network of canines, we were absolutely charmed. How nice that the dogs helped Roger and Anita find one another. The wet handkerchief laughter is such a "meet cute" memory.

And Cruella de Vil? Only the best villain of all time. She totally deserved her song!

This was the first time the credits were interesting. That animated Dalmatian spot grooving to a hot jazz sound? And the best fiction in the whole thing? That after selling one hit song, Roger can afford a country house to keep 101 dogs in!

The Sword and the Stone was our least favorite of the set. My daughter rated it "B for boring." Wart's scratchy voice irritated her, too, and she thought Merlin was worse than useless--actively harmful to the boy he was supposedly teaching.

I liked it more than my daughter did, but I see her point about Merlin. Given that he's supposed to be mentoring the king who became the heart of England, the tutoring lessons seem to only play for comedy with no build-up of any kind of insight or new skill that might help a boy become a powerful leader. I guess he learned that owls are more reliable than old men if you get in a bind? I think he was supposed to learning to use his mind instead of fighting with brawn, but really he just got in trouble and was rescued.

Wart himself suffers from a very sanitized version of poverty and servitude, where despite being worked very hard and mistreated by his foster family, he still buys into their life completely and never becomes angry or resentful about his lot in life. A perfect "grateful orphan" I suppose--the kind one finds in fiction only, because in real life traumatic experiences affect us and a child faced with an entire room full of dishes to scrub doesn't greet them with peaceful acceptance.

There were lots of fun and funny moments, but in the end, it felt like a string of moments and not a cohesive story with character arcs.

It's hard for me to judge The Jungle Book with any kind of objectivity because it was a favorite of mine twice--once in my own childhood and again with my older daughter, who was absolutely obsessed with it as a toddler.

Sometimes, when I am walking around I catch myself humming the tune to the "fetching the water song" at the very end.

My daughter agrees that this was miles above any Disney film so far for the music. Long before we began this project, she was already in love with Louis Prima's "I Wanna Be Like You" which is right up her musical alley. "The Bare Necessities" is irresistible and Phil Harris is one of my favorite voice actors ever. So looking forward to getting to Thomas O'Malley and Little John in upcoming films!

"We're Your Friends" with the vultures is full of lines with double meaning and dark humor that are absolutely delightful.

The movie is a visual treat, too, combining realistic animal movement and gorgeous scenery with slapstick comedy and anthropomorphism at its comedic best.

I guess I still love it . . .though that little girl at the end is awfully grown up for age 9 or so, and enticing the boy back human village life with a pair of long eyelashes had the girl and I rolling our eyes. Hmmmm…looking forward to seeing what she think of Tarzan when we get there. Another man's world vs. animal world with a character who crosses between.

Revisiting all these old movies and experiencing them with my daughter--a total 21st century girl--is an education and a delight. Looking forward to the next one!