DON QUIXOTE AND THE WINDMILLS

One of the greatest heroes of Western literature is played for a fool in this picture-book adaptation of Cervantes’s classic. An exposition sets up Don Quixote’s transformation from bookish dreamer to knight errant wannabe, and then the text (and the knight) launch into the famous windmills, ending abruptly immediately afterward. The original runs to 1,000 pages, more or less; any attempt to squeeze it into a 32-page picture book is necessarily going to cut a little. In leaving most of the story on the cutting-room floor, however, this version so compresses Quixote’s character development that he is nothing but a buffoon, with none of the original’s ennobling qualities. Fisher’s illustrations are colorful and amusing enough, but do not compensate for the compression of the text. The whole begs the question: does the picture-book audience really need to be introduced to Don Quixote? There are legions of stories out there that, when rendered for children, entertain while maintaining their integrity, and Kimmel is no slouch at presenting them. But please, let kids grow up and encounter this good knight when they are ready for the real thing. (Picture book. 5-8)