Anna

Body consciousness and generational trauma cast long shadows in this inventive, dexterous modern fable from promising newcomer Oberländer. Set in the fictional mountain village of Bad Hohenheim, Germany, the story spans three generations of Annas. Beautiful, "beloved" Anna 1 is elected the village's Christmas Tree Queen three years running, but her daughter Anna 2 stands out from birth for her exceptional height and grasshopper-like legs. "I should have left you in the woods," Anna 1 proclaims, besieging her daughter with absurd proposals for disguising her tallness (such as wearing a floor-length dress and walking on her knees). When Anna 2's own daughter, Anna 3, turns out just as tall and lanky, Anna 2 refuses to let provincial notions of the appropriate feminine physique torment yet another generation. Oberländer's winking bedtime-story text appears in careful exercise book cursive, while the snappy, geometric illustrations feature bold planes of color and rough-textured pencil shading. A versatile stylist, Oberländer shifts from minimalist wooden-toy-like village scenes to faces evoking Picasso's neoclassical portraits. Her cartooning is hilarious throughout, presenting such memorable images as Anna 2's gangly legs wound around a tricycle and Anna 3 folding herself through a doorway. Readers of all ages will want to linger over every page of this clever feminist tale. (Mar.)