JORINDA AND JORINDEL

A romantic Grimm fairytale that’s hard to find in a single edition is retold and made lovelier by Watts’s pretty illustrations. A witch inhabits a castle in a forest; any young man approaching closer than one hundred steps is held there until he promises never to return. Young women suffer a grimmer fate: They are turned into birds and locked in cages in the castle. Jorinda and Jorindel are a young couple who wander within the witch’s domain with predictable results. Jorindel, freed but distraught, dreams of a purple flower that will break the enchantment. He searches for eight days, finds the flower and it does protect him as he approaches the castle. He frees Jorinda, “and they lived happily together for many years,” as do the 700 young women the witch had kept. The illustrations are lacy and dreamlike, with echoes of Chagall in the bright feathers and black cloak of the witch and the flower vision that inspires Jorindel. (Picture book/fairytale. 5-9)