THE POISONED APPLE

A cheeky riff on “Snow White.”

A witch loathes a princess. There’s no backstory provided, but “this particular princess was getting a little too sweet for her own good”—whatever that means to this witch—and the witch sets out to create a poisoned apple. But she can only collect enough ingredients to poison a single apple, so her plan has only one shot. The scheme starts out fine—hilariously, the witch just hands the apple directly to the princess, who accepts it without question—but it turns into an innocent apple-relay. Princess, dwarfs, deer, and a squirrel pass the apple along, each to the next, in artless generosity to hungry fellow creatures. When the squirrel scampers up a tree with the apple, the witch, desperate to avoid having “put in all that work for nothing,” climbs up too—and suffers a fall that leads her, via crash-induced amnesia, into the very doom she’d planned for the princess. Above the narrative text, occasional speech bubbles contain pictures that function as the story’s only dialogue, including one swear word (don’t tell!). Everyone seems White; the witch is green-skinned with a stereotypical big nose and moles. The illustrations are clever and offbeat—a fawn rides atop its parent’s back—and highlight hatchings, sharp points (including the witch’s nose), and curves (including the princess’s bodice: Whether by dress design or posture, her back always appears arched).

Merry, with a bit of zest.