[catTEA review] The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots by Beatrix Potter and Quentin Blake

September 1, 2016June 25, 2024 ~ jama ~ 26 Comments

Holy catnip!

It’s a big day for Beatrix Potter fans: The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots is officially out in the world (UK release September 1, U.S. release September 6)!

Ever since we first heard tell of this book back in January, all of us here in the Alphabet Soup kitchen have been counting down the days, hours, and minutes to this much anticipated event.

After all, it’s not every day that a long lost manuscript written over 100 years ago by such a beloved author is rediscovered and brought to life with brand new illustrations by celebrated illustrator Quentin Blake.

Potter wrote The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots in 1914, but had not finished illustrating it. Two years ago, editor and publisher Jo Hanks stumbled upon a reference to Kitty’s story in a letter from Beatrix to her publisher in an out-of-print collection of her writings. In the Warne archive at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Hanks found three Kitty-in-Boots manuscripts — two handwritten in children’s school notebooks and one typeset in dummy form — along with a colored sketch of Kitty and a pencil rough of foxy arch-villain Mr. Tod.

*Supposedly Potter’s only finished illustration for the book, intended as the frontispiece. Courtesy Frederick Warne & Co./V&A.*

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beatrix part two: of guinea pigs, nursery rhymes and cupcakes

March 25, 2016June 25, 2024 ~ jama ~ 60 Comments

Today we are honored to welcome a very special guest to Alphabet Soup: the one and only Amiable Guinea-pig!

After reading and reviewing Beatrix Potter and the Unfortunate Tale of a Borrowed Guinea Pig by Deborah Hopkinson and Charlotte Voake (Schwartz & Wade, 2016), we felt a tasty homage to this dapper little fellow was definitely in order.

Peter Rabbit gets a lot of attention, as does Miss Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Jeremy Fisher, Tom Kitten and Squirrel Nutkin. In fact, they all have their own little books written about them. But not the Amiable one, who was actually the first guinea pig in Miss Potter’s work. She wrote a clever limerick about him that appeared in Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes (1917).

But one limerick does not a book make. Wouldn’t you feel a little slighted? To add insult to injury, initially Miss Potter’s publisher Frederick Warne & Co. wasn’t that keen on the Appley Dapply rhyme collection, which she had hoped to publish following the release of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902.

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beatrix part one: a review of Beatrix Potter and the Unfortunate Tale of a Borrowed Guinea Pig + other guinea pig musings

March 22, 2016June 25, 2024 ~ jama ~ 19 Comments

My Dear Reader,

Since I’m a big Beatrix Potter fan, I was happy to see Beatrix Potter and the Unfortunate Tale of a Borrowed Guinea Pig by Deborah Hopkinson and Charlotte Voake published in time to celebrate Miss Potter’s 150th birthday this year.

I enjoyed the story immensely, but I must confess it reminded me of my own tragic guinea pig experience (*shudder*). But more on that later.

This charming cautionary tale is about the time young Beatrix, who loved to draw and paint wild as well as tame animals, borrowed a guinea pig from her neighbor to use as a live model. She and her younger brother Bertram had lots of pets in the third floor playroom/science lab/art studio of their London home — pets such as snakes, snails, bats, ducks, rabbits, hedgehogs and salamanders. Though Beatrix loved all these creatures, we are warned early on that “she did not always have the best of luck with them.”

We are given evidence of several animal mishaps via journal entries that note an escaped snake and newts, a family of dead and dried up snails, and even a bat which was dismembered by a jay. And what of the unfortunate guinea pig? Beatrix especially loved painting animals doing “ordinary, everyday things, like reading the newspaper, working in the garden, or taking tea. (And why not?).” And the day came when Beatrix just had to paint a guinea pig and they didn’t have one at 2 Bolton Gardens. Not to worry, though, as quite a few of them apparently lived in Miss Paget’s parlor.

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a little taste of susan branch’s a fine romance + lemon butter cookies

January 21, 2014June 25, 2024 ~ jama ~ 53 Comments

“England, with its history and air of magic, the soil and woods thick with meanings that survive in fragments, is an empire of imagination.” ~ T.S. Eliot

Help yourself to a cup of organic darjeeling and a lemon butter cookie.

Fancy a drive along a winding country road, rolling green hills and grey stone walls as far as the eye can see? Perhaps a leisurely stroll along an ancient footpath across a meadow resplendent with wildflowers?

Maybe you’d rather visit Beatrix Potter’s house, explore the formal gardens of a stately home, find a welcoming inn for a spot of tea, or join the convivial conversation at a neighborhood pub.

I cannot think of a better way to celebrate all that is glorious, interesting, inspiring, beautiful, memorable, unique and charming about England than to pore over the pages of Susan Branch’s latest book, A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside (Vineyard Stories, 2013).

This gorgeous, handwritten, illustrated diary chronicles the two months in 2012 when Susan and her true love Joe wandered around England from Tenterden, Kent, up to the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, and down through the Cotswolds.

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mrs. tiggy-winkle comes to tea

March 27, 2013June 25, 2024 ~ jama ~ 48 Comments

Just in case you were wondering, the reason we usually look so spiffy around here is because we have the best washerwoman.

Her name is Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and she hails from the Lake District. Do you know her too? A tidier, more conscientious “clear-starcher” you’d be hard pressed to find. The other day, when untimely Spring (?) snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle chanced by to deliver a freshly laundered stack of tea towels and table linens.

We couldn’t very well turn her out in a snowstorm, so we invited her in for tea. Coincidentally, Cornelius and I had just baked a fresh batch of Littletown-Farm Carrot Cookies. Every Easter we get into a “Peter Rabbit mood” and crave carrots. We found the cookie recipe in Peter Rabbit’s Natural Foods Cookbook, and since we’d made Fierce Bad Rabbit’s Carrot-Raisin Salad from that book many times before, we thought the cookies would also be a good bet.