Reviews: (by author)

Sedgwick, Marcus. (Hans Christian Andersen’s) The Emperor’s New Clothes. Illus. Alison Jay. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2004. $16.95. ISBN 0-8118-4569-9.

I know Andersen’s long been out of copyright, but couldn’t the publisher or author acknowledge him by name somewhere in the book? “Retold by” acknowledges it’s someone else’s story, but doesn’t say whose. Otherwise, I really like this book, the illustrations for which are absolutely original. Alison Jay has both a refined sense of humor and a distinct style of painting called “crackle-glaze” that overlays the art with a tactile, cracked stone look, adding a feeling of age. Her sense of layout is extraordinary too; each page is laid out differently, the crackle-glazed painting predominant but often offset by crisp white space. The animal characters, a lion king, tortoise and hare retainers, weasel tailors and the colorful but not garish details of setting and action all make for a fine aesthetic experience.

I confess that, as a professor of children’s lit, I am not a big fan of adaptations of original works. There are exceptions—Julius’ Lester’s Br’er Rabbit is an improvement over Joel Chandler Harris’ original, for example. Marcus Sedgwick does a fine job of translating Andersen’s prose into lively, rhymed poetry, it’s just I don’t see what the improvement is.

A. Allison

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