Search results for: sweden

Fun Facts Friday: Gustaf Tenggren
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / November 3, 2017

Gustaf Tenggren (3 November, 1896 – 9 April, 1970) was an illustrator born in Sweden, but lived most of his life in the United States. 1) Born in Sweden, Mr. Tenggren got a painting scholarship to the art school in Gothenburg. 2) He was a successful illustrator specializing in Swedish folklore and fairy tales. 3) By 1920, after a successful first exhibition, Mr. Tenggren moved to Cleveland, Ohio with his sister. In 1922 he moved to New York City. 4) The early 1920s were the heyday of illustrated books and the talented Mr. Tenggren’s work was already appearing in published books. 5) He also did a lot of advertising work until the great depression. 6) In 1936, Mr. Tenggren was hired by Walt Disney Productions as chief illustrator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 7) As a concept artist he worked closely with the animators. He also illustrated many of the tie-ins to the film such as the serialized version of Snow White which was featured in two successive issues of Good Housekeeping Magazine before the film was released. He also worked on Bambi, Pinocchio, The Ugly Duckling and The Old Mill (backgrounds on the last two). 8) After…

Author Q&A with Kirk Kjeldsen
Author Q&A , Latest Posts / February 16, 2017

I read and enjoyed Land of Hidden Fires by Kirk Kjeldsen very much. At first I had trepidation about reading it, but I’m very glad I read the novel. Mr. Kjeldsen was kind enough to answer a few questions for me. Q. How did you prepare to tell the story of Kari, a teenage girl? A. I didn’t intend to write the novel with a teenage girl as the protagonist; I first wanted to write about the story of my great-grandfather’s brother, Anfinn Kjeldsen, who helped a downed American pilot get to Sweden during WWII. I couldn’t find enough details, though, and trying to tell what had happened with what little that I had wasn’t working for me, so I put it aside for a few years. I eventually tried it again as fiction, making the protagonist a young man about Anfinn’s age, and it started coming easier. Then I thought it might be more interesting if the main character was a teenage boy, and then a teenage girl, and the story took off. So the character sort of wrote herself, in a way, which I think all good characters do.I didn’t consciously or specifically prepare writing the story of a…

Fun Facts Friday: Carl Sandburg
Latest Posts / January 6, 2017

Carl Sandburg (6 January, 1878 – 22 July 1967) was an American writer, editor and poet. By Al Ravenna, World Telegram staff photographer – Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c15064, Public Domain, Link Sandburg’s parents emigrated from Sweden. The family’s name was originally Johnson, but due to the many Johnson’s his father met he renamed the family. At age 13 Mr. Sandburg left school to help out his poor family. At age 17 Mr. Sandburg lived as a hobo. During the Spanish-American War, Mr. Sandburg served in Puerto Rico. During his service, a student from Lombard College, which was in Mr. Sandburg’s hometown, convinced him to enroll. Professor Philip Green Wright saw talent in his Sandburg, his student, encouraged him to write and even paid to publish his volume book of poems. Mr. Sandburg never graduated, but he did receive an honorary diploma later on in life. Mr. Sandburg received three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for the second volume of his biography of Abraham Lincoln. Carl Sandburg’s boyhood home in Galesburg is now a museum.

Book Review: The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson
4 Stars , Fiction , Latest Posts / March 30, 2016

We were “promised” some sort of magical “Disney happiness” which doesn’t exist, and never did. Happiness, for me, are the small things which happen daily – a smile from the wife, a hug from the kids, a strange giving a hand to another without an conditions..

Fun Facts Friday: Selma Lagerlöf
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / November 20, 2015

Selma Lagerlöf (20 November, 1858 – 16 March, 1940) was a prize winning author from Sweden. “1959 CPA 2284” by Post of USSR http://kolekzioner.net/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=224. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons. Lagerlöf was born with a hip injury and gotten an illness which left her lame in both legs, however she recovered. She was the fifth child out of six siblings. She was working as a teacher when she submitted her work to a writing contest and won a publishing contract. Her most famous book was Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils). Lagerlöf was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She traveled to Italy, Palestine and other parts of the world. Those travels inspired much of her work. Lagerlöf was an active suffragette. She was a friend of German-Jewish write Nelly Sachs and due to her efforts the Swedish Royal family secured the release of Ms. Sachs and her mother from Nazi Germany. Lagerlöf sold the movie rights to all her unpulished work to Swedish Cinema Theatre. Many of books were made into movies during the golden age of Swedish silent films. A street in Jerusalem, Israel is named after the…

Book Review: The Swimmer by Joakim Zander
4 Stars , Fiction , Latest Posts / February 11, 2015

Klara Walldéen is an aide to the European Union Parliament who is working in Brussels. Klara grew up with her grandparents on a remote archipelago in Sweden. Accidentally Klara has gotten possession of a laptop containing information that the European Union as well as the US government does not want to be publicized.

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