GOOD GRISELLE

In old Paris, a wager is placed between stone angels standing tall on a cathedral wall and stone gargoyles squatting precariously on cathedral ledges. The gargoyles, speaking in voices "passersby mistake for the rumbling of carts," bet that the good, kind lacemaker Griselle cannot love an ugly little boy; the angels, cooing like pigeons, smugly bet that she can. The angels win. Griselle welcomes the ugly boy, who smells as ripe as "a dish of milk left out too long" and is as heavy "as a sin," and she dresses him in clothes fashioned from her own, including her pearl-studded wedding dress. Although she is cruelly tested, she proves her worth and loves the child — she even scolds the angels for calling him ugly. When Griselle dies, her boy disappears. But one can still see him at the cathedral, writes Yolen (Beneath the Ghost Moon, p. 1142, etc.; Old Dame Counterpane, see below): He is the ugly little stone angel with the "absolutely angelic smile." Told with language as precise — and illustrated with watercolors as delicate — as the "miracles of lace" the heroine creates. (Fiction/Picture book. 7+)