One of the Grimms’ funnier and lesser-known tales receives an expansion and a new ending. When the Queen hears that Zelda, the Royal Baker’s daughter, loves to spin, she immediately promises Zelda her son’s hand in marriage if she can spin three great roomsful of flax. It sounds like a good deal—except that Zelda hates to spin, hates work of any sort. All appears to be lost, until three very peculiar fairies arrive to help; one has a grotesquely large foot, another’s tongue sticks out permanently, and the third has a bizarre, swollen thumb—all due to the fairies’ inordinate love of spinning. This offering hews quite closely to the original story, expanding somewhat to develop character and adding some contemporary dialogue (“Gross!” Zelda exclaims when the fairies offer to teach her to spin). When the fairies arrive at the girl’s wedding and are introduced as her “cousins,” the prince is so repulsed by their spinning-induced deformities that he begs his mother that his bride be relieved of all future spinning duties. The Grimms’ tale ends here, but Ernst (Sea, Sand, Me!, 2001, etc.) adds a postscript that gives her disagreeable heroine her comeuppance: the Queen, under the impression that Zelda is an industrious sort, makes her the Royal Baker, a just desert missing from the original. The pastel line-and-watercolor illustrations invest each character with great personality, from the sly and petulant Zelda to the almost simple-mindedly genial fairies. While the message that industry is its own reward is never far from the top, the general silliness keeps didacticism from the story, making it one that kids are sure to ask for a second time. (Picture book/folktale. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-46826-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your dreads! Isadora once again plies her hand using colorful, textured collages to depict her fourth fairy tale relocated to Africa. The narrative follows the basic story line: Taken by an evil sorceress at birth, Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower; Rapunzel and the prince “get married” in the tower and she gets pregnant. The sorceress cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and tricks the prince, who throws himself from the tower and is blinded by thorns. The terse ending states: “The prince led Rapunzel and their twins to his kingdom, where they were received with great joy and lived happily every after.” Facial features, clothing, dreadlocks, vultures and the prince riding a zebra convey a generic African setting, but at times, the mixture of patterns and textures obfuscates the scenes. The textile and grain characteristic of the hewn art lacks the elegant romance of Zelinksy’s Caldecott version. Not a first purchase, but useful in comparing renditions to incorporate a multicultural aspect. (Picture book/fairy tale. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-24772-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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