Review by New York Times Review
SINCE THE BEGINNING of "Upon a time," adults have spent so many hours analyzing and worrying over fairy tales, it's a wonder most aren't worn down to a few frazzled golden threads. But before we can get to the meaning of a fairy tale, it must delight us, or scare us, or perhaps both. Two books for young readers - Emily Jenkins's "Brave Red, Smart Frog," illustrated by Rohan Daniel Eason, and "Snow & Rose," by Emily Winfield Martin - reimagine Brothers Grimm fairy tales, treating delight, with a few grisly bits folded in, as its own reward. The deeper meanings of these stories do emerge, but the pleasure they give is paramount. "Brave Red, Smart Frog" is subtitled "A New Book of Old Tales," and the stories in it include riffs on "Snow White" and "Red Riding Hood." But Jenkins adds welcome layers of texture to parables we think we know well. She's particularly interested in flawed heroines, like Crystal, the princess in her version of "The Frog Prince," a girl with too many pretty dresses, too many pairs of shoes and "too many ladies-inwaiting instead of friends." Crystal is spoiled, but it isn't wholly her fault. She has "too few occupations and too few real conversations" - in a way she's like today's superbusy, superachieving kids, who barely have time to imagine what it might be like to kiss a frog. Eason's finely detailed illustrations balance the natural world with a fantastical one: A witch's candy cottage looks as realistic and believable as the elaborately etched bark of a tree. In "Snow & Rose," a reimagining of the Grimms' "Snow-White and Rose-Red," the lives of two sisters - practical, considerate Rose and petulant, anxious Snow - are changed forever when their father disappears in the woods. They're forced to leave their comfortable house filled with pretty things and, with their grief-stricken, somewhat checked-out mother , make a new home in the very forest that swallowed up their father. Rose attempts cheerfulness; Snow, ever wistful, can't stop thinking about all that the family has lost. As the two try to make the best of this terrible change in circumstances, they open their eyes to the new people and creatures around them. There's an ancient librarian with a wooden leg, whose shelves contain not books but strange, useful treasures; a crabby little elf-man out to stir up trouble; and a boy who specializes in growing polychrome mushrooms. He's given them fanciful names like Ruby Toadstools, Flea's Parasols, and, my personal favorite, Butterscotch Tinies. Martin, ties up the story with a graceful, satisfying flourish. Her illustrations - a bear caught in a trap, his face a world of confused, hurt feelings, or Snow, Rose and their mother heading out on Christmas Day in cozy cloaks with pointed hoods - have a gentle folkloric naivete, reminiscent of Tasha Ttidor's work. They're very pretty but also suitably mysterious. As with all fairy tales, there are lessons in these books: Cultivate inner beauty. Be kind, especially to any creature or fellow human who is suffering. And because young heroines figure so prominently, one notion emerges with particular clarity: Girls have the interior resources to do anything they want, and while a little magic helps, it's hardly necessary. Jenkins and Martin also understand that while it's important to build confidence, humility and a sense of humor about oneself are essential. In other words, that stuff about being open to kissing the frog still rings true. Now please pass the Butterscotch Tinies. Stephanie zacharek is the film critic for Time magazine.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
In an author's note to this brief, charming collection, Jenkins mentions that her goal is not to reimagine classic fairy tales, but rather tell them in a way that honors the oral tradition of the original stories. In simple, straightforward narratives, she retells seven stories, some of which (Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel) will be familiar to readers, while others (Three Wishes, Toads and Pearls, The Three Great Noodles) will most likely be completely new. Jenkins' version of The Frog Prince expands somewhat in its characterizations, while the rest of the stories stick more or less to familiar territory. Though there's no real overlap between stories, they're loosely connected by setting (There was once a forest; a strange forest, where it was always winter. You have heard of it before), and each tale opens with a full-color postcard-style illustration that showcases that setting. Jenkins doesn't deviate much from the well-trod forest path, but she still puts a stamp on these stories that's all her own.--Reagan, Maggie Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fine, spare prose distinguishes these shrewd retellings of seven familiar tales. "Snow White" opens with a shiver: "There was once a frozen forest, cold as cold ever was." Jenkins (Tiger and Badger) scarcely alters the stories; they end the way they generally do. Instead, she deepens and refines them, giving the characters humanity and individuality. When January, the queen in "Snow White," looks in the mirror, she "wanted the mirror to show the face she had seen long ago, a face of smooth and shining ice." Blunt, the only nonfool in a story about three fools, "felt quite lucky, suddenly, to have found a future wife so tenderhearted as Amity, noodle though she was." The dialogue hums: "Why should I care if a dairy maid feels my skin?" the Frog Prince demands. Sometimes the tales are drawn into eerie relationship with each other (the hunter in "Red Riding Hood" is the same one who fails to kill Snow White). Eason's drawings, one for each story, conjure an atmosphere of otherworldliness with deep forests and thatched cottages huddled in snow. Ages 8-12. Author's agent: Elizabeth Kaplan, Elizabeth Kaplan Literary. Illustrator's agency: Illustration Ltd. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-Although wordy at times, Jenkins's skillful narration generally stays faithful to the source material of seven retold tales and provides depth for some characters. However, the author makes some tweaks, and her idea of "happy-ever-after" is a little different than in the original stories. In "The Frog Prince," Crystal doesn't get to throw the frog against the wall, but when the frog turns into a prince, they do fall in love and marry. Cherry-the good sister in "Toads and Pearls"-does not marry the king's son as in the Charles Perrault version. ("She wanted to make a life for herself somewhere new.... She came to a town, rented a room, and paid in pearls.") It's not clear whether Snow White will marry Prince Beacon. But Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and the "Three Great Noodles" end up pretty much as expected. Jenkins explains in a concluding author's note that her intent was to be faithful, though not necessarily accurate, in retelling the tales "to bring out what's most meaningful to me." Her occasional references to bunnies and bluebirds are a bit too cute, but the contemporary tone is effective. This slim, handsome volume includes an illustrated title page for each tale with a simple, nicely sketched setting usually framed in the forest's twining branches. -VERDICT A welcome visit for fairy-tale fans, and a useful introduction for readers not so familiar with these enduring stories.-Margaret Bush, -Simmons College, Boston © Copyright 2017. 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
Jenkins rewrites seven folktales--including "Snow White," "The Frog Prince," and "The Three Great Noodles"--using well-known tellers' versions (Perrault's, Grimms', et al.) as jumping-off points, but making them her own: "I wrote to bring out what's most meaningful to me in the stories." Her versions are, by turns, lyrical, unsettling, familiar, and new. A useful and imaginative collection of folklore retellings. (c) Copyright 2018. 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
Folk and fairy tales intersect in tiny ways.Loosely organized in and around a frozen forest where "the streams were iced, the bushes bare" come seven classical tales. There are witches here, "some with cold hearts, and others with hot ovens and ugly appetites"; there is "beauty like an iciclesharp and slippery." Parents die, and children either turn "bitter as walnuts" or stay "sweet as cherries." Each tale keeps mostly to itself, holding its integrity and recognizabilitybut they whisper to one another. A "sunny forest populated by bunnies and bluebirds" shows up more than once in contrast to the frozen one; the huntsman who slits open Red Riding Hood's wolf is "returning from a terrible errand," which hauntingly reveals that he's Snow White's huntsman too. Red's wolf inquires whether her grandmother lives "in the sugar house," a reference to "Hansel and Gretel." A dry, repeated lesson about beauty in character whisks past. Jenkins experiments with modern moral complexity by afflicting Red's wolf with painful hunger and self-hatred for how he sates it and by painting the Frog Prince's princesswho never gets to throw her frog against a wallas problematically girly and spoiled. An old trope of blindness connoting evil remains. Humans are ostensibly white; a tree sprite is brown. Eason's illustrations seem consciously to evoke the work of Trina Schart Hyman. Subtly untraditional, with lovely prose. (author's note) (Fairy tales. 5-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
