europeana

These illus­tra­tions are like the first fables…aesop
The chil­drens book illus­tra­tor that rivals aesop is La Fontaine…
Circa 1860 , por­traits of early amer­i­can children…these are
in a vein that is clas­si­cal to chil­drens book illus­trat­ing
sim­i­lar to valezquez…A favorite is the Russ­ian Fairy Tale,
Vasily and Vasilissa, or Baba Yaga the witch who lives in
a house on chicken legs in the for­est and likes to eat chil­dren.
Patri­cial Polacco wrote of Baba Yaga babushka…she like s
chil­dren and gives to them, does not eat them. Thankfully.

Fairy tales carry frag­ments of the his­tory of very real peo­ple. Some of these sto­ries, espe­cially those which men­tion spin­dles, spin­ning, or weav­ing, can be traced back to the Mag­dalen­ian peo­ple of 12,500 BC dur­ing the ice age. Oral tra­di­tion and sym­bols were used to record the lives of peo­ple before lit­er­ary records; arche­typal images were used to rep­re­sent larger groups. Arche­types are things which all peo­ple every­where have seen — like the sun, or mother and child. Heroes, damsels in dis­tress, vil­lains, all are arche­types caught in sit­u­a­tions which are also com­mon to human­ity. This is why fairy tale sto­ries are still pow­er­ful and com­pelling. If you would like more info on decod­ing sym­bols, myths, fairy tales etc, visit Once Upon a Time: the World of Sym­bols blog.