I read this review of Miss Potter (from The Horn Book website) after I'd written rather ignorantly about Beatrix Potter and the film, for Tots to Teens (21st Jan).
There is a very interesting "fact vs fiction" link in the article that you can also access here.
Tots to Teens
Star Mag
21st January 2007
APPARENTLY, the film Miss Potter, about the life of writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter, will not be released in Malaysia. Although it stars two big Hollywood names - Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor - its central character is probably not one whom most Malaysians would be familiar with. Can't you just hear the local movie distributors? "Potter? Does she make plates and bowls?" Or, with desperate hope ..."Potter? As in, Harry Potter? Is she a long-lost aunt? Can she do magic?"
I'm sure the decision makers decided that a film about Beatrix Potter would not make any money in this country. If Potter had been a nymphomaniac who'd lived it up in Paris with a string of lovers of both sexes, it would not have mattered if her only legacy was a slim volume of grammatically dubious pornography, but would anyone pay to watch a movie about a homely spinster who wrote about rabbits, mice and ducks? Well, would you?
Admittedly, I'd told myself that I would give Miss Potter a miss mainly because I try to avoid any film starring Zellweger, but also because I was scornful of the way the scriptwriters had, I believed, invented a romance between Potter and her editor, Norman Warne (played by McGregor).
I thought they did it simply to spice up the writer's otherwise rather unexciting life, but I have since discovered that Potter and Warne were indeed in love and that her family disapproved of the relationship. Warne died of pneumonia in anycase, and Potter eventually married a solicitor named William Heelis, gave up writing and became a successful sheep-breeder in England's Lake District! She willed her property to the National Trust and if you are ever in that part of the world you can visit her cottage, Hill Top, near Lake Windermere.
For fans of Potter and/or Zellweger, you'll just have to wait for the film to be released on DVD. You should also check out the excellent animated films of Potter stories released by Britsh television station ITV. They are available, on VCD, at stores like MPH and Speedy Video and include The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale Of Peter Rabbit And Benjamin Bunny, The Tale Of Flopsy Bunnies and Mrs Tittlemouse, and The Tale Of Tom Kitten and Jemima Puddleduck.
And of course, there are the actual stories. You can buy each tale separately or all of them in one big fat volume. There are also all kinds of other editions including board books for toddlers.
I remember a time when Elesh, my eldest son, was Potter mad. His favourites were The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, The Tale of Two Bad Mice and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. The first time I read to him the scene in which Nutkin gets his tail bitten off by Old Brown the owl, Elesh was inconsolable. The few times he asked for The Tale of Pigling Bland, I was (very nearly) inconsolable. Parents, be warned! This story goes on for far longer than any parent should be made to read aloud. Have rations handy!
I know some feel that the world inhabited by Peter Rabbit and his friends is just too foreign for Malaysian children's tastes. Why is it any more foreign than a boarding school for wizards? Children are more adaptable and accepting, curious and interested than we give them credit for. If they don't know what a poke bonnet (as worn by Jemima Puddleduck) is, they can look it up in the dictionary. No one would complain if Potter's characters spoke American on the Disney Channel a la Winnie the Pooh. Should Peter and his friends suffer the same gruesome fate? Quick, before it's too late! Beatrix Potter's original and charming tales are available at all good bookstores.
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