Skip.
Recipes alternate with the fairy and folk tales that inspired them in this Italian import.
Unfortunately, neither element shines. The tales, while a great mix of well-known favorites and new ones (“The Six Swans,” “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”), are each crammed on a single page and lack clear paragraph divisions, making them quite difficult to read. But the recipes are the book’s biggest weakness. Many of the ingredients are not cheap and may prove hard to find for U.S. readers—gelatin sheets, vanilla pod, icing sugar (though both U.S. and metric measurements are included). Similarly, lots of kitchen gadgets are used—molds, mixer, blender, stick mixer, food processor, bain-marie (there’s no glossary). Some of the recipes seem to be missing steps (cut using cookie cutters, but there’s no mention of rolling the dough) or are not specific enough—“stew the apples in the pan for several minutes”; “add rice and wait until it is cooked”; “1 jar of your favorite jam”; “glass” as a unit of measure—and there is no note about safety or parental supervision. Attanasio’s digital illustrations feature large-headed characters with tiny limbs and bodies, but the details shown don’t always match the text, and a couple of recipes involving shaping puff pastry truly need photos. Finally, the book’s audience is difficult to pin down—the complexity of the recipes eliminates most fairy-tale readers.
Skip. (index of recipes and ingredients) (Cookbook/fairy tales. 8-10)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-88-544-0869-2
Page Count: 54
Publisher: White Star
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
The small, novel-like format (5.5 x 8 inches) will most likely appeal to reluctant or recently independent readers, who...
This much-abridged recreation of the famous tale by Hans Christian Andersen is smoothly told, following the original structure of seven short chapters, while leaving out numerous details and the Christian elements of the original.
Characters (a wolf) and incidents (a final confrontation between Gerda and the Snow Queen) have been added. Because of the elision and truncation of incidents from the original story, Gerda’s quest is less immediate and heart wrenching, and the motivations of many of the characters she meets are harder to understand. For example, it is not clear that the old woman with the magical garden tries to keep Gerda with her because she has always longed for a daughter, nor is the precarious situation of the outlaw’s daughter, who, in the original, sleeps with a knife at her side, apparent. The sophisticated, surreal and dreamlike illustrations created through mixed media, including manipulated photographs of dolls, flowers and paper constructions, often charmingly spill over onto the pages of text.
The small, novel-like format (5.5 x 8 inches) will most likely appeal to reluctant or recently independent readers, who might be encouraged by this simple retelling to seek fuller versions of the tale. (Fairy tale. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84686-662-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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