Is it to be Little
Thumbling or the giant, 100% subsidiary of the EADS group?
Imagine a fantastical world where the Rootabaga Fairy from Carl Sandburg's "Rootabaga Stories" has lost her magic wand and the poor woodcutter from "Hop-o'-My Thumb" is pregnant with her eighth child and is looking for her lost Little
Thumbling.
One audience member at the Smithsonian symposium experienced a phonological priming effect of kiriki to Kirikou, the protagonist
thumbling in the French-West African animated feature film Kirikou et la sorciere (Kirikou and the Sorceress, 1998).
You remember K'tonton, the "Jewish
thumbling" who takes a ride on a chopping knife and wishes he hadn't, who goes to synagogue and swings on a lulav, who takes a ride on a runaway dreidl?
Many other fairy tales are similarly based on a reformulated knowledge of folk experience enlivened by magic: Perrault's '
Thumbling' and the Grimms' 'Hansel and Gretel' embellish a story of children abandoned through poverty with wealth magically mediated at its conclusions.
Ironically the managements consider workers and their representatives as undemocratic,
thumbling block in way of industrial growth and against the system.