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Book Review: Peter and the Wolf

Posted on September 8, 2010 | No responses

Rating:

Here is another illustrated version of Peter and the Wolf.  Mikolaycak’s paintings are more realistic than Beck’s, and they express a brave and dramatic mood very fitting for Prokofiev’s wonderful musical creation.  They are just a little more frightening than Beck’s, but still aren’t very scary.  Carlson’s translation of the piece is quite smooth, but it will fall to an adult to explain which musical instruments are represented by each character.  It is, however, more widely available than Beck’s version.

Book Review: Peter and the Wolf

Posted on September 8, 2010 | No responses

Rating:

Sergei Prokofiev wrote a number of orchestral works for children, the most popular of which is Peter and the Wolf.  In this piece, each instrument of the orchestra is represented by a different character in a story about the intrepid Peter who, accompanied by a cat and bird, sets out from his home to capture a wolf in the middle of Russian winter.  Of course, Peter’s foolishness in disobeying his grandfather is something adults may wish to discuss with young listeners.  Most of the time when children do such things the ending is not happy.

While the piece is entertaining for children who learn primarily through auditory channels, most will need a visual element to help maintain their attention.  This book provides just the kind of visual focal point young children need.  Ian Beck’s pleasant, cheerful pictures minimize the edge of fear that might be introduced by a young child’s conflict with a fearsome predator.  The book ends with a postscript explaining which instruments are represented by which characters, and invites the reader to look back and find where the author has incorporated pictures of the instrument within the illustrated borders of the story text.

While this book would not be a great read-aloud on its own, it is an excellent supplement to the orchestral classic.

Book Review: Cinderella

Posted on September 7, 2010 | No responses

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Given the popularity of Disney’s cartoon Cinderella, there are surprisingly few excellent versions of the original fairy tale available, but if you can get your hands on this one you may have no desire to keep looking.  Kinuko Craft’s version surpasses other versions just as the resplendent Cinderella, in luscious gown and glass slippers, outshone the other women at the prince’s ball.  Craft’s sumptuous paintings are similar to those of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, and fairy tale purists will be happy to note that her streamlined prose is adapted from Arthur Rackham’s and Andrew Lang’s versions of the classic story.  In the story, a beautiful young woman is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, but she is magically transported to the prince’s ball with the help of her kindly fairy godmother.  There her natural beauty (accentuated by the finery lavished on her by the fairy godmother) wins the prince’s heart, and he scours the kingdom to find her — his only clue the glass slipper she left behind in her hurry to be out of sight before the magic spell was broken.

Astonishingly, this book has not been published widely, but is available in public libraries and on the used book market.

Book Review: The Wreck of the Zephyr

Posted on September 6, 2010 | No responses

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Award-winning children’s book author Chris van Allsburg brings us another original fantasy.  In it a young boy, brilliant at sailing, scoffs at the advice of more experienced sailors and ventures out into a storm.  When his boat capsizes, he finds himself on an island populated by people who sail in the sky with the use of special sails.  Determined to master this new skill, he steals some sails and uses them to travel home.  Forgetting that the sails do not work over land, he decides to show off by ringing his village’s bell tower and, like a modern-day Icarus, plunges from the sky.  The ending is a little more gentle than the Greek story, and instead of perishing he lives out his life limping from his injury, searching for new sails to restore his flight.

Van Allsburg, in his characteristically understated way, spins the story in a somber mood, allowing the fantastical story events and the timeless themes of pride, desire, and sorrow to emerge with quiet grandeur.  This kind of fantasy may appeal best to serious-minded children, but even those who are used to more lighthearted books may benefit from this story of inflated pride which leads to tragedy.

Book Review: The Very Busy Spider

Posted on August 28, 2010 | No responses

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In this pleasant sequel to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle introduces a spider who, carried by the wind, lands on a fence post and begins to spin her web.  In each two-page spread, a different animal approaches her, inviting her to participate in an activity familiar to them: the horse wants her to go for a ride, the cow invites her to eat some grass, the sheep invites her for a run in the meadow, and so on.  The spider’s response to each invitation is silence, because “She was very busy spinning her web.”  At the end of the story,, the purpose of the web is revealed when a pesty fly (which had buzzed around each animal in the preceding pages) meets its fitting end, and the spider settles down to sleep, satisfied after her busy day.

This great toddler book has a lot going for it.  Farm animals introduce themselves with their characteristic sound and behavior, we learn about a spider’s natural behavior, and each turn of the page page brings another pleasing repetition of greeting and silence that moves the story along nicely, while retaining the attention of preverbal listeners.

The spider’s example of steady, goal-oriented and satisfying work is a good model for children who need to grow up into productive adults.  While the book doesn’t have quite the brilliance of The Very Hungry Caterpiller, it is a good addition to a child’s reading basket.

Book Review: Dreams

Posted on August 24, 2010 | No responses

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This is another of Spier’s wonderful wordless books.  In it, the two Noonan children spend a pleasant summer afternoon cloudgazing, showing each other what shapes they see in the clouds.  The story is a series of changing scenes.  In the first two-page spread we see the actual cloud shapes as the children gaze upward; then we turn the page and see the clouds coalesced into imaginative shapes, and the children pointing them out to one another.  In our technology-driven society, this story about children exercising their imaginations together is a breath of fresh air.  Throughout the book there is a gentle, tender camaraderie between the two siblings that is a refreshment in itself.

This book is unfortunately out of print, but is available in public libraries and through the used book market.

Book Review: Night at the Fair

Posted on August 23, 2010 | No responses

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The community fair, complete with rides, games, and funnel cakes is an old American institution, imported from Europe, whose popularity persists despite many changes in our social rhythms.  Donald Crews gives a childs-eye view of the fair, capturing well the sense of noisy excitement and fun that pervades the event.  His bright colors, flashing against a darkened sky, show the rides and games up well, and it’s almost possible to hear the hawkers inviting visitors to try out the games.  In this fair there are no animals competing for prizes, only games, food, and rides; but there is an enjoyable self-portrait of the author on page seven.  As always, Crews captures the mood of a complex social phenomenon with what looks like effortless skill.

This book, with its bright colors, minimal text, and easy-to-understand pictures, and general sense of excitement, is a good choice for preschoolers who will soon attend (or who wish to relive) a local fair.

Book Review: One Wintry Night

Posted on August 22, 2010 | No responses

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There are a many well-written, poorly illustrated Bible storybooks, and even more well-illustrated versions which drift from the original meaning of the biblical text.  Ruth Bell Graham‘s Christmas Bible storybook, illustrated by award-winning artist Richard Jesse Watson, is visually one of the best Bible picture books I have seen, while remaining close to the original text of the Bible.

The book opens with a boy hurting his ankle during a blizzard in the mountains, near a mountain home that his grandfather helped build.  He respectfully knocks on the door and the woman who lives there puts him up until the storm abates.  While he enjoys the warm security of the home, she tells him Bible stories beginning with the Creation and ending with Jesus’ resurrection.  This meta-plot of an adult caretaker telling a Bible story to an eager young listener is quite overused in Christian literature, but in this case we can overlook it because the stories the old lady tells are so good.  Graham’s own grandmotherly voice comes through clearly, and you can imagine her practicing these stories on her grandchildren.  The stories progress from the Old Testament into the New, building to a climax with Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, and a clear presentation of the Christian Gospel, the “real meaning of Christmas.”  Watson’s illustrations are breathtaking, full of vigor and splendor, with an unusual originality and excellence of artwork that is still true to the original spirit of the stories.

Not everyone will love Graham’s and Watson’s interpretations of the Bible stories: in giving them conversational warmth and visual detail each author has added a lot of details that are not in the original Bible.  The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is renamed the Testing Tree.  When Cain kills Abel, Adam and Eve “wept till there were no tears left, and awoke the next day to weep again.”  Noah and his family, on exiting the ark, feel an impulse to “run and jump and turn cartwheels.”  Watson’s glorious scene of Eden gratuitously includes half-inch-tall back views of a naked Adam and Eve, and (strangely enough) the angel which guards the Garden of Eden against their re-entry resembles a female New-Age Native American.  Because of these and other interpretive choices, I recommend that adults read the book ahead of their audience to ensure that they agree with the way the Bible stories are presented.

Even with its minor faults, this book makes an excellent read-aloud for the Christmas season, and a good Christmas gift for most families.

Book Review: The Book of Jonah

Posted on August 22, 2010 | No responses

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Peter Spier has again brought us an enthralling rendition of a beloved Bible story.  Unlike his wordless Noah’s Ark, this book includes text that closely parallels the biblical story, but the intricate detail and visual drama are interesting enough to keep pre-readers engaged long after the story has been read aloud.  For older readers, there is a postscript containing a fair bit of historical background, maps and archaelogical information about the historical Nineveh.

The book has been reprinted with a paraphrased text, and according to a helpful Amazon reviewer, the reprinted version is of inferior quality.  It’s probably best to play it safe and stick with the original version, which is available in public libraries and the used book market.

Book Review: King Midas and the Golden Touch

Posted on August 18, 2010 | No responses

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King Midas, with his greed for gold, learned an important lesson when he got his wish that everything he touched would turn to gold.  This gift became a curse, and he realized almost too late that the things most precious to him could not be purchased with money.  This ancient Greek myth, with its timeless themes of love and greed, has been told and retold for centuries.

Charlotte and K.Y. Craft have produced a beautiful rendition of King Midas and the Golden Touch.  Charlotte Craft’s well-crafted retelling (based on Nathanael Hawthorne’s version) moves the story along at a good pace, giving enough details to satisfy an elementary-age audience.  The great appeal of this book, however, comes from K.Y. Craft’s stunningly beautiful paintings.  Lush with details, Craft’s use of light and shadow evokes a medieval mood, bringing the ancient story a little closer to the present day; and the glimmer of gold shines on every page.  This is an excellent book to introduce the classic myth to young readers, providing them with an imaginative framework for engaging the full version of the story at a later age.

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