Similar in format to this team’s The Lion and the Mouse and Other Aesop’s Fables, this handsomely designed collection of retellings of six Grimm stories is distinctive in voice and image. The tales are both familiar and lesser known: The Hare and the Hedgehog, King of the Birds, When the Birds and Beasts Went to War, The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, The Fox and the Geese, and the title tale. Author and artist notes in the front cite each one’s approach to Aesop; Orgel worked directly from the German text and updated some language; Kitchen describes how the Grimm tales appeal to the child in all of us. His elegant, finely textured illustrations resonate, setting the boxed text against scenery backdrops. A one-page biography of the Grimm Brothers adds a finishing touch. The retellings flow nicely from one story to the next. A beautiful family gift book. (Folklore. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59643-010-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
Pretty, though as condensations go, less Wonder-full than Robert Sabuda’s pop-up Alice (2003) or the digital Alicewinks...
A much-abridged version of the classic’s first five chapters, dressed up with large and properly surreal illustrations.
Rhatigan and Nurnberg retain “Curiouser and curiouser!” and other select bits of the original while recasting the narrative in various sizes of type and a modern-sounding idiom: “Tiny Alice needed something special to eat to get back to her regular girl size.” They take Carroll’s bemused young explorer past initial ups and downs and her encounter with a certain (here, nonsmoking) Blue Caterpillar. Looking more to Disney than Tenniel, Puybaret casts Alice as a slender figure with flyaway corn-silk hair and big, blue, widely spaced eyes posing with balletic grace against broadly airbrushed backdrops. Leafless trees and barren hills give Wonderland an open, autumnal look. The odd vegetation adds an otherworldly tone, and compact houses and residents from the White Rabbit and the Dodo to occasional troupes of mice or other small creatures in circus dress are depicted with precise, lapidary polish. A marginally relevant endpaper map (partly blocked by the flaps) leads down the River of Tears, past a turnoff for a Bathroom and on toward “the Tea Party.”
Pretty, though as condensations go, less Wonder-full than Robert Sabuda’s pop-up Alice (2003) or the digital Alicewinks (2013). (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62354-049-4
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Charmed by her new baby brother, Elizabeti decides that she wants a baby of her own; she picks up a smooth rock, names it Eva and washes, feeds, and changes her, and carries her about in her cloth kanga. Hale dresses Elizabeti and her family in modern, brightly patterned clothing that practically glows against the earth-toned, sketchily defined Tanzanian village in which this is set. Although Eva appears a bit too large for Elizabeti to handle as easily as she does, the illustrations reflect the story’s simplicity; accompanied by an attentive hen, Elizabeti follows her indulgent mother about, mimicking each nurturing activity. The object of Elizabeti’s affection may be peculiar, but the love itself is real. Later, she rescues Eva from the fire pit, tenderly cleans her, then cradles the stone until she—Elizabeti—falls asleep. Stuve-Bodeen’s debut is quirky but believable, lightly dusted with cultural detail, and features universal emotions in an unusual setting. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-880000-70-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
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