Sunday Strangeness
Yesterday, I linked to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles entry at Wikipedia. One of the short stories published as part of The Martian Chronicles is “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The ending differs from the original short story.
The Wikipedia entry adds: “In 1984, Soviet studio Uzbekfilm produced There Will Come Soft Rains as a short animated film.” Here is the film, which is subtitled in case you don’t understand Russian. It’s a decent short, but the security system seems a bit overzealous–probably not something a family with children would want! You do have to feel sorry for the little bird at the end too.
The animation concludes with the portions of the poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale.
The poem is in the public domain (in the U.S.), so I can share it with you here:
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
~Sara Teasdale
While we’re on the subject of literature, apparently fire-breathing dragons are now “too dangerous” for children. Read the story here. First, they began banning tag on the playground. Now, fire-breathing dragons in books are threatening our children. What will they take away from kids next?
Pretty sad state of affairs, Dan. I think the children’s book author should have taken her book to another publisher–though I imagine contract considerations likely entered into the equation. How sad that children’s imaginations should be stifled in this manner. But, I guess it’s a sign of the times. There are so many troubled kids in the world today. (Of course, banning fire-breathing dragons in children’s books won’t do a thing to make those kids better.) Our culture is so litigation-oriented that there’s bound to be a backlash–though I can’t help but wonder if it’s really necessary to be quite that paranoid about a lawsuit!
Jeanne
If the publisher is so concerned, why not release the book with a warning? “Children should not read this book without parental supervision.”