Swan Maiden - Hardcover

Kindergarten-Grade 3?A fairy tale that resounds with familiar motifs. The youngest of three princes eludes the enchantment that overcomes his brothers and discovers the thief of the king's golden pears?a beautiful maiden bewitched in the body of a swan. Falling in love at first sight, the prince flies off on her back to confront a three-eyed witch and perform three "impossible" tasks (with the maiden's help), releasing her from the spell. Greene's retelling varies only minimally from the original. However, Sauber's paintings have a cigar-box sentimentality, are murky in color, awkward in form, and wanting in imagination. Where Pyle's maiden sits powerfully astride the pear tree's trunk, her white gown billowing around her, Sauber's beams giddily down from the tree top, looking for all the world like a Victorian saloon painting. Text and illustrations neither add nor pay homage to Pyle's version. As he was, indeed, "one of America's foremost writers and illustrators for children," and as the tale is still available in The Wonder Clock (Peter Smith, 1966), this current interpretation seems misguided and superfluous.?Marcia Hupp, Mamaroneck Public Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 5-8. Trying to discover who is stealing pears from his golden pear tree, the king asks for the help of his three sons. After the older two fail, the youngest son cleverly outwits the thief, who is a beautiful swan maiden. The prince promises not to shoot her if she'll agree to marry him. She accepts his proposal but explains that he must first outsmart the three-eyed witch and free her from the witch's power. Pyle's original, romantic story, which first appeared in the nineteenth-century Wonder Clock, captures the essence of a classic fairy tale. Although this edition is credited specifically to Pyle, Ellin Greene, in her afterword, states that this is her retelling, shortened especially for the storyteller. Each full-page illustration is executed in bold, dark colors and framed by a two-color border. The type, printed on large blocks of white paper, intrudes on the illustrations, detracting from the visual quality of the work, but Sauber's painterly style is a match for this enchanting tale of good overcoming evil. April Judge