Elsa Beskow–Children of the Forest

Google did it again – distracted me from whatever it was I originally intended to look up… And this in spite of the image keeping still this time! But I recognized it, and knew the artist behind it. What I did not know was that today was her 139th birthday…

Elsa Beskow (née Maartman) (11 February 1874, Stockholm – 30 June 1953) was a Swedish author and illustrator of children's books.

And I do remember the Children of the Forest (Swedish: Tomtebobarnen) from my childhood.

Tomtebobarnen (early 1900s, Nationalmuseum Stockholm)

Little elves playing with Tomtebobarnen/Children of the Forest (1910)

Elsa Beskow frequently combined reality with elements from the fairy tale world. She became one of the most well known of all Swedish children's book artists. Many of her books are continually reprinted.

Beskow also illustrated ABC books and songbooks for Swedish schools.

Illustrated poem/song about sleeping trees in winter
(early 1900s, Nationalmuseum Stockholm).

I’ll be linking this post to ABC Wednesday (E for Elsa)
(unless I get distracted again and forget…)

Can’t Concentrate…

A day or two ago I was watching a TV documentary about the human brain, and how we are a lot less capable of multi-tasking than we might think. They did experiments using magicians and film clips, and asked the test people and audience to keep count of more than one thing at the same time, or to look out for more than one thing simultaneously, and then asked them about something completely different. The amount of things, and the kind of things one misses is really incredible. (Like you’re asked to keep count of how many times two people in blue hats, among a group of dancers, step in and out of the spotlight… And afterwards they ask: Did you see the penguin? Er… what… Rewind, and sure enough, there was full size human dressed up in a penguin costume walking across the scene in the background… Unnoticed!)  

Anyway… Google seems to be doing their own show of the same kind today. HOW am I going to keep in mind what it was I was going to look up, when this is what comes up on my screen:

 

 

To my credit, I did notice the ice bear! But I can’t for the life of me remember what it was I was going to google in the first place.

When I clicked the button in the middle, it got worse and turned into a game.

It can’t be April Fool’s Day yet.
Can someone tell me what’s going on?

I can’t help laughing a little… But if it continues, I’m going to have to swith to another standard search engine. (Yes, Google – I’m serious!)

I have no idea any more what it was I originally intended to blog about today.