With great respect for the past, this edition succeeds in bringing the illustrations into the present.
Three of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales for children are republished with gorgeous original art by Robinson.
It would be a loss for contemporary children not to have these stories: “The Happy Prince,” who sacrifices his entire self to save those who need saving, with the help of a little bird; “The Nightingale and the Rose,” another tale of love and sacrifice; and “The Selfish Giant,” with its beautiful images of a garden of delight and a child savior. The language is stately and the tales, moral and sentimental, but at their cores, they are about love and how love behaves. The pairings of story and art glow with the truth that love knows no boundaries. The 1888 art is beautifully reproduced in full pages, while the linear, originally black-and-white images have been washed with color. The latter is always a chancy business, as the book’s designer, Emma Byrne, acknowledges: “[T]his is a tightrope act, as it is important not to destroy the integrity of the fine linework.” It does not seem meretricious in this case; the result is lovely. This is full-blown art nouveau: The watercolors are voluptuous in their sinuous line and delicacy of hue, and even the text pages have shadow patterns beneath their lovely type. Chaste biographies of Wilde and Robinson are appended.
With great respect for the past, this edition succeeds in bringing the illustrations into the present. (Fairy tales. 6-10)Pub Date: April 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84717-589-2
Page Count: 76
Publisher: O'Brien Press/Dufour Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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