Review by New York Times Review
FAIRY TALE RETELLINGS: Climb up a pile of these revamped, remixed and rehabilitated classics and we reach high enough to wake the giant. And yet, no matter how much we empower the princess, humanize the witch and emasculate the prince, or how earnestly we whack and whittle these tales to reflect us, we seem only to make the original tales stronger. At first glance, a new version of "Vasilisa the Beautiful" seems to stand apart from the glut of retellings by choosing not to revise at all. Anthea Bell's text faithfully recounts the Russian fairy tale about a young girl left with a magical doll by her dying mother, who vows that the doll will look after her in difficult times. Vasilisa's father remarries a cruel woman who sends her stepdaughter on an errand to the witch Baba Yaga, expecting her never to return. With the help of her magical doll, Vasilisa passes Baba Yaga's tests and earns the twin totems of Ever After: revenge on her tormentors and a rich, handsome prince. Bell and the illustrator, Anna Morgunova, might believe "Vasilisa the Beautiful" stands the test of time, but they have their work cut out. First, there's that title. In an era when even Disney must thaw frozen, passive princesses, Vasilisa is blond, meek and barely lifts a finger. Even with subtle additions emphasizing her courage, it's the doll that's the hero, whisking through Baba Yaga's tasks, keeping her owner safe, and ensuring she finds her prince. (How Vasilisa wins him is itself sticky - he marries her because she's pretty and a good seamstress. Angela Carter would have picked his bones clean.) But Morgunova's illustrations hint at a rich inner life beneath the surface. With each image set askew, often superimposed against a starry sky, the effect is to emphasize all the characters' powerlessness in Baba Yaga's great forest. Vasilisa is always falling, reeling or sprawling; birds and fish dwarf humans in their size; and even Baba Yaga herself never fully appears, drawn only as feathers and fog, as if she's half Mother Earth and half Zen harpy. The art, so timeless and raw, offers a charged dream-life that suggests the primal nerve Vasilisa's story strikes in Morgunova is far stronger than the lure of revisionism. In contrast, Neil Gaiman's "The Sleeper and the Spindle," intended for a young adult audience, is nothing but revision. Here, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are contemporaries, with the latter postponing her marriage to rescue the slumbering princess from a wicked fairy. The iconography is familiar - sidekick dwarves, thorn-covered castle, a bitter old witch - but Gaiman's mash-up is unabashedly feminist. The prince sulks over the delayed wedding, while Snow White dons chain mail and rides out to save the day. The gnarled, ugly witch is certainly more than she seems. And the princely kiss that wakes a sleeping beauty doesn't involve a prince at all. Plenty of authors have tried such tactics, only to succumb to another hazard of retelling - the niggling feeling that when all is said and done, what we're reading is souped-up fan fiction. But Gaiman knows fairy tales in his bones, and his work is so sonically tuned that it breathes on its own from the first line ("It was the closest kingdom to the queen's, as the crow flies, but not even the crows flew it"). What's most remarkable about "The Sleeper and the Spindle," besides its string of expert twists, is how it feels told rather than written. Time is elusive, magic is unexplained, personal details ignored ("Names are in short supply in this telling," the narrator affirms). Adding to the wonder are Chris Riddell's dazzling illustrations, black-and-white with flashes of gold, so detailed in their dark imagination that, at times, Gaiman's story seems less a fairy tale and more a bad, beautiful dream. Read this to a child alongside another Grimms tale and he will no doubt think this is the older story. In "The Most Wonderful Thing in the World," Vivian French grapples with a third hazard of fairy tale retellings: fairy tale structure itself. Yearning royals seeking the most wonderful thing in the world is its own subgenre of folklore, with the seekers bounding to the ends of the earth only to find that what they've been hunting was waiting at home all along. These stories skew very young, for a child with even the slightest nose for fairy tales can't help seeing the ending in the setup. Yet, like Bell and Morgunova, French bets on a traditional telling of the tale, even if tweeness hangs over it like a Damoclean sword. Lucia is an overprotected princess, but when the king and queen realize she will one day lead their kingdom, they conclude she will need a husband (those who protest this conclusion won't find sympathy here). They consult the wisest man in the kingdom, who advises them to "find the young man who can show you the most wonderful thing in the world." While the royal couple entertain would-be suitors, Lucia escapes the palace and asks Salvatore, the wise man's son, to show her the city. The king and queen come up short; Lucia and Salvatore find love, and Salvatore offers Lucia as the answer to the riddle and wins her hand. It's as rarefied as it sounds, but French is a skilled storyteller, and with the help of Angela Barrett's illustrations invoking steampunk, Edwardian style and a gilded Venice, she reminds us how fresh a fairy tale can feel in the right hands. The king and queen's quest slyly moves beyond the mundane - a hundred roses, a snowwhite horse - to shimmering fantasies: an aquatic car, a piece of frozen sky, a blue cheetah whose fur reflects a bat-filled sky. In her first trip out of the palace, Lucia explores not a fusty medieval kingdom, but a world of "glittering arcades" and "velvet-curtained mansions," stirring the thought that the most wonderful thing in the world might indeed be a European city free of tourists. It's so alluring a tapestry that when the final revelation takes place in a quiet fairy-tale wood, we feel palpable relief. Perhaps our quest to reinvigorate classic stories is no different from the king and queen's. Again and again, we stray in search of better fortune, only to find our way back home. SOMAN CHAINANI is the author of the School for Good and Evil trilogy.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 11, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
You think you know the story of Sleeping Beauty? Not once Gaiman gets his hands on it. At this almost-graphic-novel's outset, a raven-haired queen is resignedly preparing for her wedding marriage, she has decided, would be the end of her life . . . if life was a time of choices when three dwarves arrive to report that a plaguelike enchanted sleep is creeping toward the kingdom. Learning that the key to lifting the spell lies in waking a spindle-pricked maiden, the queen dons her armor and strikes out in rescue. Gaiman's storytelling immediately casts a spell over readers and contains more twists than merely substituting a daring queen for a charming prince cobweb-covered sleepwalkers shambling about like zombies, for example. Kate Greenaway winner Riddell's black pen-and-ink illustrations are accented in gold, lending a rich, gothic beauty to the tale. There are moments where this revised Sleeping Beauty misses the mark, but it's nonetheless refreshing to see its cast of women actively making choices and carving out their own destinies. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Commander of an avid fan base, Gaiman always draws a crowd. Riddell's recent appointment as the UK's children's laureate will only boost demand.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Always a superb spinner of tales, Gaiman presents a filigreed elaboration of Sleeping Beauty that, before long, reveals itself as something more. Three dwarves discover a realm in which everyone has fallen asleep, and they cross into the next country to warn its queen of the great plague that threatens her people. Alert readers won't miss the hint to the queen's identity: "Would I sleep, as they did?" she asks one of the dwarfs, who replies, "You slept for a year.... And then you woke again, none the worse for it." Traveling to the cursed kingdom, the queen and dwarves encounter threatening zombie sleepers and more, but the storyline is still recognizable underneath the new details. It isn't until the travelers penetrate the castle that things tilt sideways. Something new is going on, and readers will be carried to the end by the whirlwind force of Gaiman's imagination. Riddell draws in pen and ink, eschewing color-save for select gold accents-and pouring his energy into myriad, spidery lines and delicate cross-hatching that recall Aubrey Beardsley's eerie set pieces. It's a genuine treat. Ages 13-up. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Snow White meets Sleeping Beauty in this fairytale mash-up where things are not what they seem. When three dwarfs learn of a sleeping plague spreading throughout the land, they alert their queen. The queen, already feeling that marriage means the end of her ability to make choices in her life, gladly postpones her wedding, grabs her sword, and sets off with the dwarfs to get to the bottom of the magical curse. On their way, they encounter throngs of cobweb-covered sleepers. To their surprise, the slumbering masses talk in their sleep and eventually begin to lumber after them. The team forges ahead to the castle, where they find the sleeping princess and an old woman. The queen's kiss, shown in a sumptuous spread, wakes the princess. The quest turns out to be just what the queen needs to be reminded of the choices she has. Riddell's spectacularly intricate ink drawings, gilded with gold, bring Gaiman's inventive story to life. Each page is packed with marvelous details-vines claustrophobically twist everywhere and expressions convey far more emotion than the words let on. Gaiman's narrative about strength, sacrifice, choice, and identity is no simple retelling; he sends readers down one path then deliciously sends the story veering off in an unexpected direction. The only downside-the tale ends far too soon. VERDICT This highly recommended visually stunning twist on two classic fairy tales will be well received by fans of graphic novels and fantasy stories.-Amanda MacGregor, Great River Regional Library, St. Cloud, MN © Copyright 2015. 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
This short story, a "Snow White"/"Sleeping Beauty" mash-up with plenty of feminist fairy-tale magic of its own, first appeared in the 2013 YA collection Rag & Bone: New Twists on Timeless Tales. Riddell's detailed illustrations (in black-and-white with gold accents) add character, charm, and a hint of creepiness to the tale of a queen setting out to rescue a princess from a curse. (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Is it fair to expect a masterpiece when Gaiman and Riddell work together? Probably. The two men have collaborated on a number of books published in the U.K., to great success. The illustrations in Fortunately, the Milk are a marvel of draftsmanship, and Coraline and The Graveyard Book are considered classics. Other artists illustrated the books in the U.S., quite beautifully, but the British editions are objects of envy for many fans. This new collaboration is a spectacular art object. Almost every page is decorated with gold leaf. Even the page numbers have gold filigree. The story combines two fairy tales, and it contains two startling ideas. Snow White, after years in a sleeping spell, might not be affected by the enchantment placed on Sleeping Beauty. And, more important, after her adventures in the woods, Snow White might find sitting on a throne as dull as lying in a glass coffin. The villainess, unfortunately, distracts from those ideas. She's just another sorceress in a fantasy book, one in a long line of evildoers who want youth and powerbut this is a fairy tale, after all. The gorgeous, art nouveau-inspired black-and-white drawings, many of which seem to consciously echo such divergent talents as Arthur Rackham and Robert Lawson, however, are magnificent, and a few sentences describing sleepwalkers who speak in unison may haunt readers for years. If this book isn't quite a masterpiece, it's certainly a treasure, and that's more than enough. (Fairy tale. 11-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
