Hello, I'm Richard Nicholas Nimz, prospector of the written word. Well, it's time for the Caldecott winners again, the past award winners for excellence in illustration. As time's gone on, it's interesting to see past trends in illustration, and one good example is today's offering, Marcia Brown's adaptation of Cinderella.
Citation: Perrault, C., & Brown, M. (1954). Cinderella, or, The little glass slipper. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Summary: This is an adaptation of Perrault's version of the Cinderella story, and there really isn't any deviation. A man dies, leaving his daughter at the mercy of his stepdaughters and second wife. However, one day, a three-day ball is announced and the stepmother and daughters go, leaving Cinderella behind. With the help of a fairy godmother, Cinderella gets to go to all three nights, leaving a slipper behind on the third. The prince uses this slipper to track down Cinderella, she forgives her sisters' ill treatment of her and they all live happily ever after.
Thoughts: A bit mixed, and I feel like this would've been better if it had been a slightly longer book. I'm not a big fan of the style, watercolors and slightly exaggerated pencil drawings that purposefully don't quite contain the colors, but I imagine that there are people who do. This is a translation of the original French fairy tale, and it includes the original ending, with Cinderella just forgiving her stepsisters instead of punishing them, and the morals that a good heart makes everything possible and that material advantages may lose out to simple fate in the end. These are good messages. I really adore how Brown shows Cinderella talking to her stepsisters at the ball when they can't recognize her and I imagine such a scene would help show why she forgives them at the end (since 'purely out of the goodness of her heart' probably won't fly). Sadly, nothing is shown. However, the end result is good, and I can see this being useful introducing Charles Perrault and his fairy-tales. Seriously, those things need more exposure.
Second opinion: "This... has the smoothness of a good translation and a unique charm to her feathery light pictures."
(1954, June 15th). CINDERELLA. Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marcia-brown/cinderella-10/
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