The classic story of Hansel and Gretel informed us of the alarming eating habits of witches, who love to lure children into their gingerbread houses, fatten them up with sweets, snap them into the oven and cook them right up. Yum.

How unsophisticated, though, and how simply old fashioned by today’s standards of cooking shows and recipe books; and how delightful then, to have a modern take on the gruesome eating habits of pointy hatted, children eating witches that writer Martin Howard and artist Colin Stimpson have cooked up as How to Cook Children: A Grisly Recipe Book, a funny and refreshingly politically incorrect update on the idea.

It is indeed a grisly recipe book, and the recipes include such delicacies as “Cajun Cherub Gumbo”, “Barbied Shrimps” and “Deepfried Small Fry with Fries”, each elucidated by a guest witch/chef with a particular speciality for cooking up the little darlings.

The real pleasure here, though, is in Stimpson’s snappy, witty, and charmingly gruesome illustrations.

I wrote about Colin Stimpson last Summer. In addition to his illustration work, he has been a concept and color guide artist on a number of animated feature films for Walt Disney Studios, as well as serving as Art Director for The Emperor’s New Groove.

He brings some of the lively style, springy line and artful exaggeration common to animation and concept art to his gleeful portrayals of our witchy chefs and their dastardly cookery.

The book is available in the UK through Pickabook and Amazon.co.uk, but unfortunately not through Amazon.com here in the the U.S. (at least not yet, Stimpson was kind enough to send me a review copy).

The Amazon UK site does have a few images, but small ones; and except for the home page of his site, Stimpson’s online portfolio doesn’t include work from the new book yet.

Fortunately, concept artist and blogger John Nevarez (see my 2005 post on John Nevarez) has posted 12 beautiful images, linked to high-resolution versions, in three posts on his blog, here, here and here.

Wicked tasty.

Hayao Miyazaki, arguably the foremost director of anime (Japanese animation), has long been concerned with issues of the conservation of the natural world. It is evident in his work, in films that deal directly with the subject, like Princess Mononoke, and as a pervasive theme through all of his films, though the subject is never handled in a simplistic, heavy handed or preaching manner.

Miyazaki has also been active in real-world preservation efforts, in particular the ongoing effort to preserve Sayama Forest, a large urban park just outside the limits of Tokyo that served as the inspiration for my favorite of his films, My Neighbor Totoro (see my post on Hayao Miyazaki).

Economic and population pressures from one of the world’s most populous cities is putting increasing pressure on the forest, as is happening to forests worldwide.

In what is partly a direct effort to save this particular forest, partly an effort to set an example and send a message about not squandering our natural treasures worldwide, and partly an acknowledgement by artists of their admiration for Miyazaki and his accomplishments, a number of artists, including Daisuki “Dice” Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie Del Carmen and many others from Pixar Animation Studios, are participating in a benefit auction of artworks to benefit the “Totoro No Furusato National Fund”, a non-profit that is working to preserve the forest.

The forest itself has become associated with Miyazaki and his character Totoro, who is a kind of forest spirit, and the project is called the Totoro Forest Project.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that Eric Orchard was kind enough to let me know about this well in advance, I got the dates wrong and I’m late in telling you about it. The online auction ended yesterday. I apologize for the late notice; I thought the online auction began today, but today (September 6, 2008) is actually the date for the live auction event at Pixar Studios.

You can still browse the gallery of works on the site, and make a direct contribution to the preservation effort, or purchase the book of art from the project, the proceeds of which also go to the non-profit. (The site isn’t clear about how to purchase the book yet, but says it will be available today.)

A selected group of the works will be featured in a special exhibition at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco from September 20th to December 7th, 2008.

About 200 artists participated, including many I’ve featured here on Lines and Colors, such as Erik Tiemens, James Jean, Ian McCaig, Khang Le, Kazu Kibuishi, Kevin Dart, Peter de Seve, Neil Campbell Ross, Manuel Arenas, Chris Appelhans, Chris Turnham, Christian Alzmann, Bobby Chiu, William Joyce, Tadahiro Uesugi, Shino Arihara, Sam Weber and many others.

(Image above: Katsuya Terada, Jackson Sze, Charles Vess, Hermann Meija)