Fairy

ONCE UPON A time, there were wolves who ate grandmas, pigs who built houses and frogs who could became princes with one magic kiss.Then children became more sophisticated and lost their need for fairy tales.Or did they?Today's children may need the magic of fairy tales even more than their parents did, says Bette Bosma, author of "Fairy Tales, Fables, Legends and Myths: Using Folk Literature in Your Classroom" (Teachers College Press, Columbia) and professor emerita at Calvin College in Michigan.

Thanks for reporting on the real ownership of the 20 acres at the proposed Mays Chapel Elementary School site ("Mays Chapel school groundbreaking disrupted by protesters," April 26). Contrary to County Executive Kevin Kamenetz's claim that the Baltimore County School System owns all 20-plus acres at this site and thus has the right to use it for a school, the BPCS owns only 10 acres; the other 10 acres are owned by Baltimore County Department of Parks and Recreation. The parks department's open space program requires reasonable use of the space by all citizens.

If you want to watch interesting TV tonight, you'd better have, get, or visit someone who subscribes to, cable. Broadcast TV tonight is sort of like obesity. It's a big waist.* "Cinderella . . . Frozen in Time" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Dorothy Hamill stars in this new, on-ice staging of the fairy tale classic, which features Lloyd Bridges as the narrator and includes a few twists. Instead of losing a glass slipper, for example, Ms. Hamill's Cinderella is attacked suddenly and cracked in the knee with a club.

It never takes long for an event like Super Bowl Week to become a theatre of the absurd, so why should anyone have been surprised to see dozens of reporters crowded around a strange-looking guy in a stocking cap and sleeveless muscle shirt for more than an hour while he delivered a rambling manifesto about his special brand of miracle supplements and therapeudic devices? That would be Mitch Ross, of course, the guy at the center of the SI.com “deer antler” story a few days ago that made Ray Lewis temporarily divert attention from his “last ride” to deny that he never, ever used any banned performance-enhancing substances.

You will pick up this thin, intriguingly named little book of essays by Margaret Atwood, and you will sit down intending only to thumb through it.You will start with the first essay, "Murder in the Dark," and be drawn in immediately by the love Ms. Atwood had for the boy who didn't love her back. Her prose is serious, wry, witty and straight to the point. The sparse and serious nature of her topics -- with a hint of a giggle behind a hand -- keeps you turning pages, through the arched eyebrow of "Unpopular Gals," in which Ms. Atwood dissects the thoughts behind the wicked witches of fairy-tale fame:"The thing about good daughters is, they're so good.

A little ditty about Chuck and Diana,Two British kids doin' the best that they can-a.They never had a chance, the poor fools.Everybody said it was a fairy-tale marriage. Well, I've read my fairy tales.In the story books, he's riding a white horse and he's got regulation ears. He kisses her awake (did she take too many Halcion?) and they live happily ever after, despite having all those dwarfs underfoot.Here's what they also do in the story books: They kill off the evil stepmother. In fact, that's the only kind of mother who ever shows up in fairy tales.

THE papers and the television keep repeating "storybook marriage." Eleven years ago with the same witless monotony they kept repeating "fairy-tale wedding."What's a fairy-tale wedding? A middle-aged bachelor and an up-to-the-minute version of one of Evelyn Waugh's bright young things taking the vows -- is that a fairy-tale wedding?For a fairy-tale wedding you need a glass slipper or maybe a glass coffin and a resolute though colorless prince willing to travel around trying to fit women's feet into the slipper or ready to kiss life into palpably undead housekeepers for dwarfs.

The Ice Queen: A Novel By Alice Hoffman. Little, Brown. 214 pages. $23.95. Throughout Alice Hoffman's long career, her prose has shimmered with echoes of myths and fables as her fiction has explored decidedly modern individuals in often gritty situations. It's a tricky balance. In lesser works such as Local Girls, the magical undertones feel forced, and even such solid efforts as The River King display Hoffman's tendency to overdo lovely descriptions of the natural world. But when the mix is right, as in the unsparing Blue Diary, she's one of contemporary American literature's most satisfying and thoughtful practitioners.

Fairy tales span our lives. As children, they were read to us. As parents and grandparents, we read them to the youngest members of the family.As classic as they may be in written form, there is nothing more enjoyable than a fairy tale brought to life on stage.Last week I saw Theatre on the Hill's production of "The Emperor's New Clothes."This is the third consecutive year my family attended TOTH's summer production for children. As usual, we were not disappointed.Westminster resident Jean Burgess, who directs the show and is a member of the ensemble cast for "Emperor," said that in the past three years the summer lineup for TOTH has included a tale for children of all ages.

While detangling her granddaughter's hair, the cookbook author began the transformation to writer of fairy tales. Bobbie Hinman of Bel Air has had seven cookbooks published in the past 23 years. But the former schoolteacher, who is a grandmother of 10, has moved from writing books with titles such as Lean and Luscious and The Meatless Gourmet to one called The Knot Fairy. After reading the fairy tale at preschools and book signings, Hinman has decided, "This really is much more fun to read than a cookbook.

Ballet Theatre of Maryland opened its 35th season, and 10th with artistic director Dianna Cuatto at the helm, with the fireworks of a world-premiere ballet. Known for enchanting audiences with classic tales at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Cuatto summoned new choreographic wizardry for her personal favorite, "The Dancing Princesses," a lesser-known Grimm fairy tale. Striving to deliver "a dramatic retelling in dance where I could create an amazing new secret world of magic," Cuatto achieved her goal and more.

Ellicott City residents Rosario and Maria Di Marco never lost their desire to have a second home by the sea in Lewes, Del. To this day, the quiet resort town holds happy memories of summer vacations at Fort Miles near Cape Henlopen Park when their children were growing up. "Three years ago, while Googling for properties in the Lewes area, Rosario came across an abandoned home," Maria Di Marco recalled. "The house was in deplorable condition. The roof had caved in, snakes were hanging from the ceiling, and other creatures had decided to make it their home.

"Dragon's Dogma" Xbox 360/PS3 Capcom Rating: 3 stars out of 4 “Dragon's Dogma” has the elements of everything you'd expect from an open-world action role-playing game with a fantasy setting. Even the box art smacks of a “Dungeons and Dragons” guide. Once you get inside “Dragon's Dogma,” you realize that it is unlike any fantasy RPG (or almost any) game you've played before. The key feature of “Dragon's Dogma” is the “pawn” system, a format that allows the player to create one “main pawn,” a character that follows you perpetually, and two other pawns that are sourced from an online database of other players' pawns.

Fairy tales seem like so much fun until you start paying attention. All that violence and vengeance, the spookiness, illusion, deceit. "And ah, the woods," as Stephen Sondheim writes in his latest book. "The all-purpose symbol of the unconscious, the womb, the past, the dark place where we have our trials and emerge wiser or destroyed. " In one of his most imaginative contributions to the Broadway musical, Sondheim invites audiences to step "Into the Woods," where a mash-up of fairy tales, tribulations and discoveries await characters and audiences alike.

The Supreme Court was right in ruling this week that video games, even ones that depict scenes of graphic violence, are protected speech under the First Amendment and that states can't pass laws restricting their sale to minors. The better approach is a voluntary rating system similar to the one that many video game manufacturers and sellers already have adopted, which is akin to the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings for violence and sexual content in movies. Yet, strongly as we support the constitutional principle at hand, we're troubled by the reasoning the court used to arrive at this conclusion.

Before the hapless "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" started doing its accident-prone thing in an endless run of preview performances, the record-holder for costliest Broadway show was "Shrek the Musical. " The latter's $25 million price tag in 2008 seems downright puny compared to the $65 million already caught in the web of that other thing, but at least "Shrek" doesn't seem to present any dangers to cast or audience — not even the danger of being bored. To be sure, this venture from DreamWorks Theatricals and Neal Street Productions doesn't pack quite the visual or comic punch of the 2001 DreamWorks animated movie that inspired it. Still, as the national touring production of "Shrek" currently at the Hippodrome makes plain, the musical provides a lot of good old-fashioned family entertainment, with cute (and crude)

Mike Myers is just fine as the hero, but Eddie Murphy puts the kick back into sidekick in "Shrek," a computer-animated burlesque fairy tale that generates more belly laughs than any live-action comedy since "Best in Show." Myers stars as the title ogre, a green-skinned misanthrope who sets out to free Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from a lava-ringed castle guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. He does so on one condition: that the lord of the realm, a mini-potentate named Farquaad (John Lithgow)

VOGELSANG, Germany -- From the moment he first saw the little village castle with a "For Sale" sign on the front door and battlements looming against the sky, Hans-Rainer Schielke knew he had to have it.Never mind that it was damp and drafty, with falling plaster, rotting beams and peeling wallpaper. Never mind that a huge owl patrolled the dark attic like a fluttering spirit, or that the grounds were choked with weeds, or that the place seemed more dungeon than palace.Schielke, 43, looked and saw his future, as well as a bit of his past.

It's hard to blame Orioles fans for their recurring dream that Cal Ripken will suddenly appear on a white horse and carry them back to a brighter future. Who wouldn't want to believe that the crown prince of the Oriole Way would make things all better? That's why the story that broke on FoxSports.com on Friday night asserting that Cal offered his help to owner Peter Angelos — and was rebuffed — had fans jamming the phone lines of the local sports-talk shows and burning up the message boards with their predictable reaction to the Angelos' reported villainy.

The National Marionette Theatre presents the Brothers Grimm's classic fairy tale at 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. today at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway. Tickets are $10. Call 410-997-2324 or go to candlelightconcerts.org.