The traditional selkie story plays out in an arc of unrequited love and abandonment in this moody iteration.
Writing in terse prose cast into short lines, Virgo begins the story with the sailor going to sea as a boy but halfway through suddenly shifts point of view to that of the dreamy child born to the silent couple years later. The author shows similar indecision in describing the selkie’s garment. It is a “shadow” when the sailor steals it and a “roll of white skin” when the boy (rather than, as is more common, his mother) at last takes it down to the sea one night and swims “out under the old / moon’s path on the waters, leaving / his memories behind.” As if the sailor’s immoral act and the ensuing picture of failed domestic life in the narrative isn’t sad and remote enough, Pérez adds a full suite of subtly tinted sketches that depict either small, slumped figures in lonely landscapes or claustrophobic assemblages of floating bodies or heads, detached hands and surreal fish with human faces. As the lead victim, the selkie woman is most likely to draw sympathy from readers, but she is the least developed of the three central figures. Not much here for children, but the portentous atmosphere may prompt readers of the inked and pierced set to overlook the story’s overall lack of clarity or cohesion. (Folk tale. 14-18)
Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-88899-971-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Words to live by, trite and larded with sentiment though they be in this particular iteration.
A small volume of homilies, spun from a 2013 speech and perfect for a graduate's gift (should pots of money not be an option).
Settled in his Crystal Cave, the old magician delivers observations and instructions gathered around "Seven Most Magical Words"—Gratitude, Courage, Knowledge, Belief, Wonder, Generosity and Hope—capped and completed by an eighth, Love. Threading in avuncular references to "my good friend Buddha," "[t]hat fellow Albert Einstein" and other luminaries, he urges listeners to turn off their electronic devices (because "being fully scheduled is not the same as being fully alive"), care for the planet, allow others their beliefs, and just generally "celebrate the wonder of it all." Most importantly, don't pass up love, because without it you "won't feel agony, but you will also never experience ecstasy." It’s hard not to wonder what the audience at Oxford University, the speech’s original audience, thought of it all.
Words to live by, trite and larded with sentiment though they be in this particular iteration. (Inspiration. 17 & up)Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17325-7
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Provocative fare for students of the themes and tropes of literary and traditional folk literature.
Ten “vintage tales” chosen to challenge assumptions that fairy stories offer cut-and-dried values and life lessons for, specifically, children.
Reaching for an audience that is, as the editors put it, “beyond childhood,” the collection is introduced with an eye-opening analysis of “Little Red Riding Hood” (Perrault’s actual wording, it seems, hints that Little Red and the wolf weren’t exactly strangers) as part of a broad claim that fairy tales are often transgressive. The ensuing mix of original and traditional stories, all either written or first translated into English in the Victorian era, includes tales both familiar and un-. There’s “East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon”; “Ballad of the Bird-Bride,” which is a selkie variant featuring a sea gull; a “Puss-in-Boots” antecedent (“Costantino Fortunato”) from 16th-century Italy; and a Punjabi tale about a rat who almost parlays a bit of found root into marriage to a princess. For younger readers, the highlight is likely to be Joseph Jacobs' rendition of “The Story of the Three Bears,” as the home invader is not Goldilocks but a foulmouthed old homeless woman. But the selections are held up more for analysis than enjoyment, even Madame d’Aulnoy’s “Babiole,” which makes for labored reading despite an eponymous princess who spends most of the tale as a monkey. Kusaite’s visual jumbles of patterns and textures are as mannered as the 19th-century prose.
Provocative fare for students of the themes and tropes of literary and traditional folk literature. (source notes) (Fairy tales. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8143-4069-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Wayne State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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