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ROSALIND AND THE LITTLE DEER by Elsa Beskow

ROSALIND AND THE LITTLE DEER

by Elsa Beskow ; illustrated by Elsa Beskow

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-86315-794-3
Publisher: Floris

A little girl’s grandfather is sad because he cannot paint, so she tells him to make a picture book with her, in this tale translated from Swedish and originally published in 1924.

In their convincingly childlike story, Rosalind is sleeping in the meadow under a linden tree, with her deer nearby. A hunter comes by with his dog and points his gun at the deer, which runs away. The wakened and distraught Rosalind wants her deer friend back, and the hunter promises to return it unharmed. But the deer is captured by the king and put in a golden cage, where it refuses to eat. The hunter is locked up for allowing his dog to run free, but he sends the dog to Rosalind with a note written in charcoal, and she takes her walking stick and her linden flowers and sets off. The deer eagerly devours the linden, but the king locks up Rosalind, too, and will not let them go. Fortunately, the entire court takes a nap, the hunter frees Rosalind and her deer, and they all gambol freely and happily beneath the linden. The pictures are simple but detailed, with the colors and aspect of old prints. The king picks apples in his crown and golden coat; the hunter’s dark stone dungeon is equipped with a fireplace and a stool; the hunter, despite the presence of his gun (which disappears in the last scene) is content to blow his horn at the end.

Sweetly illogical and very old-fashioned.

(Picture book. 4-7)