THE MIDSUMMER BRIDE

Mark’s watercolors add a misty flavor of magic to Picard’s tender telling of her own fairy tale, in which a hero’s true love for his bride is put to the ultimate test. Count Alaric is quite taken by a maiden’s otherworldliness. He takes her to live in his castle, names her Catherine, and makes her his wife. He soon discovers that she is oddly distant because she is from another world—the world of the fairies—with whom she dances on midsummer night. When Alaric asks a wise woman how to make his bride truly his, she can only say that his love for Catherine is not perfect. The next time she goes dancing, Alaric clings to her through shape-shifting, forcing her to remain by his side. When confronted with her genuine love for her family, and her obvious sorrow while she remains with him, he makes his peace with her. The story is mostly well told, with atmospheric watercolors from Marks, but the phrasing of the last sentence clanks horribly and nearly ruins the happy ending: “love is perfect only when it will give up even the thing which it loves, for that thing’s sake.” (Picture book. 4-8)