Review by Booklist Review
Andersen's classic, silly fairy tale gets an East African setting in this simple picture-book retelling with brightly colored oil-paint and cut-paper collage illustrations by Caldecott Honor winner Isadora. Many women would like to marry the prince, and he travels all over the world in search of a wife, but how will he find a real princess? When a bedraggled young girl arrives one night in a fearful storm and claims she is a princess, the royal family gives her a bed with one small pea under mounds of mattresses and featherbeds. When she gets up the next morning, bruised and sleepless, they know she is the real thing. The storm scene is confusing: which figure is the visitor? Otherwise, the European story works beautifully in the lush new setting with an all-black cast and clear, detailed layers everywhere, including necklaces, head cloths, fabrics, and kente cloth. Collage is the perfect medium to show the piled-up mattresses and feather beds, each one a different texture and pattern. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Caldecott Honor artist Isadora (Ben's Trumpet) offers a visually vibrant version of this Hans Christian Andersen classic, which she sets in Africa. Created with oil paints on printed and palette paper, the stylized collage-like art features an array of rich hues and intricate patterns. The spare narrative introduces a prince who travels the world in search of a "real princess" to marry. Readers see the hopeful fellow greeting three princesses, each of whom says hello in a different African language (translated at tale's end). Alas, "there was something about each princess that was not quite right, so the prince came home again and was sad." One stormy evening a woman who claims to be a real princess arrives at the royal family's gate. After a pea is placed under 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds-in a variety of cheerful fabrics-the guest climbs a ladder to the top layer. After a sleepless night, she announces that she's "black and blue all over." A festive, flower-strewn spread reveals the prince and princess marrying, after which the portentous pea is seen on display in a museum, resting atop an elephant statue's raised trunk. An innovative interpretation of a timeless tale. Ages 3-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Isadora drops her simplified and humorless retelling of Andersen's tale into an African setting without adding meaningful cultural context to this story of a prince who travels the continent looking for a wife. Africa is treated as one culture except for three spreads that show individual princesses. These spreads are wordless except for a phrase: "Iska Waran," "Selam," or "Jambo, Habari." No translation is provided in the body of the book, so readers only learn on the last page that the words mean "hello" in three different languages. Awkward phrasing like "What a sight the rain and the wind had made her look" slows the pace of the story. Isadora uses oil paints on palette paper and decorative print paper to interpret the story visually and infuses her art with exuberant color and stylized figures. The prince and his entourage appear as shadowy figures that contrast dramatically with the deep reds and oranges of a setting sun. The three princesses are vividly portrayed: one is covered in body tattoos and looks menacing, another has light skin and an elegantly long neck covered in multicolored jewelry, and a third is dark and heavy. Faces exhibit paint strokes and look flat with minimal expression. One effective spread shows the "real" princess perched on top of "twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses" as she complains to the king and queen that she is "black and blue all over." An additional purchase.-Kirsten Cutler, Sonoma County Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
The classic Andersen version is familiar: everyone wants to marry the prince, so his mother, keen to identify a true princess, places a pea beneath twenty mattresses. Isadora sets the tale in East Africa, and she uses cut paper to create astonishing folkloric tableaux. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This simplified retelling of Andersen's classic fairy tale is relocated from Europe to Africa, bright collages evoking the many hues of the continent. Isadora's technique is reminiscent of Eric Carle's, brightly painted papers showing vigorous brushstrokes cut and arranged against a white background mingling with printed papers in a celebration of color. For much of the narrative, the prince's search for a "real" princess is downplayed in favor of "rightness," a pleasingly contemporary angle that is lost when the last princess shows up and the tale resumes its traditional track, her sleepless night on the sabotaged mattresses revealing her real-princess sensitivity. Where this treatment goes dangerously wrong, however, is in the portrayal of the three rejected princesses who precede the mattress-princess: The first wears a series of rings that elongate her neck; the second is very dark and tattooed all over; the third is darker yet, overweight by Western standards and wears a dead fish on her head. The successful princess sports buoyant dreadlocks and physically adheres to an American norm. By thus exoticizing the rejected princesses, the tale does an enormous disservice to readers and continent alike. (Picture book/fairy tale. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
