TURANDOT

The mood of combined allure and menace permeating this exotic tale is established at once by the jacket: The alabaster-skinned Turandot, draped in white gauze and pink pearls, leans languorously on a tiger holding a chrysanthemum in its jaws. Both lady and beast exhibit the same almond-eyed, ice-blue stare, as the executioner's silhouette appears in the background. Mayer has based her retelling on Carlo Gozzi's 18th-century play (and makes connections to other sources, including Puccini's opera, in an author's note); Pels's atmospheric oils, with their palette of peach, russett, plum, rose, and gray-blue, are drenched in cold moonlight and adrift in snow, warming only toward the end as the proudly barbarous ice-princess is transformed by Prince Calaf's love. As if dressing a theatrical set, Pels fills scenes with eye-catching details: the dead suitors' severed heads, capped with snow, lining the approach to the palace; the sinuous designs (painted? tattooed?) on Turandot's arms that also swirl across the face of the moon; a grotesque, owl-eyed monkey attending Calaf; the round brass hats of Turandot's rotund trio of ministers. Compellingly told, gorgeously illustrated, and likely to inspire interest in Puccini's opera. (Picture book. 8+)