LOTTE'S MAGICAL PAPER PUPPETS

The story of groundbreaking animator Lotte Reiniger.

“Long before a cartoon mouse, / Or Snow White found a little house, / There was a girl named Charlotte.” No geography or dates are noted—this White girl named Lotte could be growing up anywhere. Lotte loves cinema; it’s magic to her. She wants to create it herself. Using scissors, paper, and string, she snips out fairy-tale puppets—“Cinderella, always sweeping. / A beauty in a castle, sleeping”—and, with a camera, a lamp, and a pane of glass, she invents a form of stop-motion animation. Reiniger becomes a groundbreaking artist and filmmaker. Carr’s artwork echoes Reiniger’s style, highlighting crisp, black silhouettes. Hartman tucks rhyming verse between unrhymed lines, making for an awkward read-aloud: “At last, Lotte was ready for the cinema. / Ready for magic! / Her paper puppets danced and swayed. / Music played a serenade. / Lights wink-wink-winked.” A single illustration of Reiniger’s multiplane camera doesn’t explain its workings (backmatter does); disappointingly, Reiniger is framed more as magic-maker than brilliant artist and technician. Even her obstacles are fairy-tale–like: “A man rose up in Lotte’s land. / With twisted words, he clenched his hand / And made demands / That he command / All magic.” That “man” is Hitler—someone wanting to command more than, um, magic?—but he, the Nazis, and World War II aren’t identified until the backmatter.

Too much fairy tale and too little biography.