Thursday, March 11, 2010

Princess Blankets by Carol Ann Duffy, illustrated by Catherine Hyde

This original fairy tale contains many familiar themes and gorgeous art, but has limited appeal to children.

A princess cannot get warm and the king offers a reward to anyone who can help. People offer blankets, clothes, various remedies, and nothing helps. Then a mysterious and frightening man shows up and creates a series of blankets for the princess out of the ocean, forest, earth, and mountains. The princess is still not warm. Another man comes and offers her love and the world blankets return to their places, people rejoice, the princess is warm, and there's a happy ending.

The writing is rich and atmospheric and the pictures are mysterious and complex with textured images running through the various blankets. However, the text is too long for younger children and the story too conceptual for most of them to grasp. Older children who like art and fairy tales may enjoy this, but that's a limited audience. I'd say this book is best suited to be a gift to an adult who enjoys fairy tale art.

ISBN: 978-0763645472; Published November 2009 by Templar; Borrowed from the library

1 comment:

Ms. Yingling said...

Saw this at a Book Look and really did not like the cover. Try some Donna Jo Napoli if you want some good retellings of fairy tales.