Review by New York Times Review
WHOM would you invite to a dinner party if it could be anyone in the history of the world? Forget Copernicus and Karl Marx. Think of people who would actually be fun: the storytellers. They had their fingers on the pulse - the desires, customs and gossip - of their day and could spin a great yarn to boot. Reading Paul Fleischman and Julie Paschkis's elegantly rendered "Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella," we can imagine that storytellers from all over the globe played the greatest party game of all, weaving one big, beautiful story encompassing all of their homelands and eras. Multicultural Cinderella anthologies already fill classroom shelves, but this worthy contribution from Fleischman, known for award-winning children's books like "Seedfolks" and "Weslandia," cleverly reveals the overlapping elements of the stories by patching 17 versions together to make one cohesive narrative. Cinderella eats pan dulce one moment, accepts a sarong from a crocodile the next, then wears glass slippers (or diamond anklets, or gold sandals) to the ball. She travels by breadfruit-turned-coach and by galloping mare. Fleischman's prose is simple and the story familiar. Still, there are small surprises on every page, like this part from Indonesia: "All night the girl danced with the headman's son, until the first rooster crowed." As Fleischman explains in an author's note, the story took on the trappings of its surroundings, from its first-recorded rendering in about the ninth century, in China, to the more than 1,000 known versions worldwide. (The French version by Charles Perrault, with the glass slippers and coachmen-mice, is the one most American readers know.) The themes that have made the story relevant around the world - good overcoming evil, love trumping hate and jealousy - are alive here. Many versions suggest a belief in protective natural forces, like the cow pouring honey from its horns (Russia), Godfather Snake offering rice (India) and the sparrows helping Cinderella with her chores (Germany). Paschkis's luminous gouache paintings - hyperactive watercolors - depict brightly colored figures in traditional dress. Her subtly visible brushstrokes and the two-dimensionality of her characters suggest folk art. As the story jumps around the globe, sometimes three or more times on one page, her images make it easy for the reader to keep track. Specific colors and symbols for each place (green with Celtic-inspired vines for Ireland, red with lanterns and pagodas for China) make some pages look like lovely strips of fabric sewn together. And so you don't have to guess, the name of the country is painted in, too. While the colors create visual boundaries within the text, Paschkis's consistent style unites the illustrations. Mimicking batik, she leaves a pale underlayer of paint visible to form the people, animals and symbols, while a darker color fills in the space between them. When the Zimbabwean king announces his search for a wife, Paschkis shows three women walking to the palace wearing long gowns edged with geometric shapes and scarves wrapped high on their heads. Framing them, a brown and orange backdrop shows the king on his throne surrounded by watchful African animals. The final spread, of Cinderella's wedding to the king, depicts a United Nations crowd, suggesting the unity of cultures across languages, customs, borders. RACHEL ISADORA brings old folklore to life with a different approach. Her streamlined retelling of an unappealing Grimm fairy tale, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," leaves the story basically unchanged, but her illustrations give it a face-lift - a new home under African skies. In the story, a king locks up his 12 beautiful daughters but finds that their shoes are worn through every morning. With the help of a stranger's advice and an invisibility cloak, an old soldier solves the mystery of the tattered shoes - the young women sneak away to a nightly underground dance party with their 12 princes - and wins the hand of the eldest daughter. The message, whatever it is, is hardly uplifting. (Girls shouldn't have too much fun?) In a story lacking emotional pull or sympathetic characters, the most memorable part is the appearance of the invisibility cloak; it is also featured in the Brothers Grimm version, thus dating it back to B.P.E. (Before the Potter Era). Still, Isadora, who won a Caldecott Honor for "Ben's Trumpet," about a boy who dreams of becoming a jazz musician, rescues the text with bright, crisp collages reminiscent of Eric Carle's work. Like Paschkis, Isadora uses ornate textiles as cultural symbols. Some dancers wear detailed, realistic renderings of African fabrics in a range of styles: yellow, blue and brown zigzags; delicate, interlocking purple diamonds; thin stripes in brown and black. Others wear bold gowns painted with thick, textured brushstrokes. Their radiant faces, often shown in perfect profile, have dramatic skin tones, complicated striations of brown, yellow, orange or black. Isadora's dynamic, crowded scenes, often mounted on simple white backgrounds, spill over the edges of each two-page spread. Even a quiet illustration of the soldier resting alone in his room seems larger than life, as if we are lying right next to him. Though the story will not inspire, children will delight in Isadora's lively illustrations. "Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal" carries us back in time to see where the Cinderella story has been, presenting a richly layered feast for the eyes and mind. Isadora delivers a lavish new setting for "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," but offers no new insights. Rebecca Zerkin is a literacy teacher at Public School 9 in Manhattan.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In 1996 Jane Ray created a lovely, luxe version of this popular Grimm fairy tale about a clever soldier who discovers the nightly dancing escapades of 12 fun-loving princesses. Setting her own interpretation of the European story in Africa, as she has previously done in The Princess and the Pea (2007), Isadora offers an entirely distinct treatment that nonetheless rivals Ray's in sheer beauty. Working in collages of painted, textured paper, Isadora evokes an archetypal African kingdom through sumptuous, kente cloth textiles and Serengeti-like landscapes that pop vibrantly against primarily white backgrounds. The compositions, some of which seem influenced by the cut-paper artwork of Matisse, invite lingering examination for their impressive economy of means. In one scene, thick, parallel strips of orange against an aqua backdrop suggest a sunset's shimmer on water; elsewhere, clusters of textured shapes effectively convey silver, gold, and diamond foliage. Some readers may wish the compact, straightforward text tied in better to the setting, perhaps anchoring it to an individual country and culture. But folklore is rarely so specific, and the no-fuss approach does keep the story short for reading aloud. More significantly, perhaps, it provides an opportunity for young readers to marvel at how timeless, unembellished words can provide near-infinite space for an artist's interpretation.--Mattson, Jennifer Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As in Princess and the Pea (which PW called "an innovative interpretation of a timeless tale"), Rachel Isadora has adapted another classic to an African setting with striking collages in The Twelve Dancing Princesses. (Putnam, $16.99 32p ages 4-up ISBN 9780-399-24744-6; Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-Isadora relocates the setting of this story to the court of an African kingdom, and the result is a delightfully original version of the traditional tale. Double-page collage illustrations, crafted using oil paints, printed paper, and palette paper, feature a variety of African art and cultural motifs. The lovely princesses, whose skin tones range from light brown to deep ebony, are arrayed in a colorful range of traditional folk costumes, jewelry, and hairstyles. Beginning with the stunning cover, featuring exuberant dancing couples and huge white letters placed against a dramatic black background, Isadora's art evokes an air of high-spirited romance. Throughout, dramatic collages move the story forward at a lively pace. The dance scenes in particular, elegantly composed and detailed, come alive with swirls of movement. With her innovative re-imagining and masterful art, Isadora has created a memorable version of this tale that complements other fine retellings, such as those by Errol Le Cain (Puffin, 1981) and Jane Ray (Dutton, 1996), and extends the appeal of this timeless tale to a new audience of readers.-Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public 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
(Primary) Isadora's ebullient collages give this minimalist, unattributed retelling a generic African tribal setting. The Grimms' familiar events are all here. Hoping to discover how the king's twelve daughters manage, nightly, to reduce their shoes to shreds and thus earn a princess to wed, a soldier happens on an old woman who gives him a cloak of invisibility. Thus equipped, he follows the princesses when they trip underground to dance with a dozen princes until their shoes are indeed ""danced through."" Skillfully, Isadora pieces together forms cut from printed papers, as well as paper striated with oil paint, to evoke African costumes and landscapes; ample white space adds drama and clarity. It's a good story, one that sits comfortably in this handsome new setting with its bright patterns and sun-drenched colors; and if the text is singularly unadorned, it has the virtue of accessibility for beginning readers. (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
The familiar tale from the Brothers Grimm receives a bright treatment in an unspecified African setting. As she did with Yo, Jo! (April 2007) and The Princess and the Pea (June 2007), Isadora uses her new collage technique which combines Eric Carle-like painted paper and bright prints against clean white space, to tell her story. The text hews to the original, simplifying it somewhat but leaving the essential plot and structure intact, allowing the images to take center stage. The princesses are a rainbow, dark-, light- and medium-brown skins on bodies of varying shapes and heights, their dresses a riot of color. Visually gorgeous though it is, however, there is reason to be concerned with the arbitrary relocation of a German tale to Africa--an Africa, moreover, that owes more to an idealized conglomeration of vague sub-Saharan images than to any real evocation of a specific time or place. While this fairy-tale retelling avoids the grievous cultural misstep of the earlier Princess and the Pea, it still feels more self-indulgent than anything else, less a startling new interpretation than an opportunity to explore color, design and technique. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
