"Once, there was a tree..."

"...and she loved a little boy." Found via Spike Jonze's neat little blog We Love You So, this is the original 1973 animated version of Shel Silverstein's classic "The Giving Tree," narrated by the author himself.

Shel was a master poet and lyricist and a personal favorite of mine since a family friend gifted me a copy of "Where the Sidewalk Ends" as a child. I still have those dog-eared pages on my bookshelf.

Autumn Story

Check out this absolutely amazing video by the Firekites:

Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

The song is called "Autumn Story." The entire thing is chalkboard illustrations; no computer animation was used. You can see the hundreds of little erased sketches in each shot used to get an old fashioned moving cartoon look. Beautiful song, delightful and original video.