THE GOLDEN MARE, THE FIREBIRD
AND THE MAGIC RING
By Ruth Sanderson
Crocodile Books/Interlink Publishing
Easthampton artist and children’s author Ruth Sanderson has long delighted in illustrating classic fairytales and fantasy books, as well as recasting traditional folk stories for young readers. In reissues of two of her older books published by Crocodile Publishing, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group of Northampton, she offers richly illustrated tales that recall the Middle Ages.
“The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring” is Sanderson’s retelling of a classic Russian tale. A young huntsman, Alexi, leaves home to seek adventure. In the forest, he spares the life of a beautiful, golden mare he was about to kill, and the magic horse — it can talk, among other things — promises to help Alexi in different ways.
Alexi ends up as a huntsman for the Tsar, who covets but cannot ride Alexi’s Golden Mare. The Tsar hands increasingly difficult tasks to the young man, hoping he’ll be killed off, leaving the horse in the ruler’s hands.
In the end, Alexi will have to use the mare’s help, a magic ring and the guile of a woman he falls in love with, Yelena the Fair, to thwart the Tsar and win Yelena’s hand.
THE ENCHANTED WOOD
By Ruth Sanderson
Crocodile Books/Interlink Publishing Group
www.ruthsanderson.com
“The Enchanted Wood” is a new edition of an award-winning original story that Sanderson first published in 1991. A magical kingdom that was once “green and fair” is now gripped with drought, a seeming reflection of the king’s grief over the loss of the queen: she died giving birth to the couple’s third son.
The aging king tasks his three sons, all princes, with entering an enchanted forest to find “The Heart of the World” and thereby end the drought; the first to do it will inherit the throne. The two oldest brothers, Edmund and Owen, are cockily confident they can win the quest, but both are bewitched by the woods and stray from their goals.
That leaves the task to Galen, the youngest prince, who is truer of heart and more humble. With the help of an old woman and her daughter who he meets along the way, he resists the temptations cast by the forest to become distracted from his quest. As one reviewer writes, it’s a tale that brings “magic, adventure, and a hint of romance to young readers.”
The vibrant colors and lush, old-world style of Sanderson’s illustrations help bring both these stories to life. She uses oil on canvas and rich detail in her character portraits, particularly in the characters’ clothing. Her forested landscapes, meanwhile, which can be dark and eerie or dappled with warm sunlight, help create a suitably magical atmosphere.
GRUMBLES FROM THE TOWN:
MOTHER-GOOSE VOICES WITH A TWIST
By Jane Yolen and Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Illustrated by Angela Matteson
Word Song/Boyds Mill Press
janeyolen.com
Hatfield author Jane Yolen has added to her expansive catalog with a new book, co-written with Rebecca Kai Dotlich, that offers a different take on venerable Mother Goose rhymes — basically, alternate voices, in verse, from the ones we all grew up with.
Take “Little Miss Muffet,” the famous tale of the little girl who’s calmly eating her curds and whey until a nasty spider comes along to frighten her away. Well, what about the spider’s side of the story?
In Yolen’s “Spinning a Tale,” Little Miss Muffet is a bit of a whiner and complainer: “She didn’t like whey / that I brought for a treat. / She said that a spider / has too many feet. / She was nasty and naughty. / I gave her a push. / And instead of the tuffet / her tush met a bush.”
Dotlich uses free verse in “Spider Recalls the Tuffet Fright” to paint the whole thing as a bit of a misunderstanding: “So there I was, / dangling and spinning / like spiders do, minding my own business … I sneezed. / She whooped. / She wailed. / Shouted ‘Gesundheit!’ / and bailed.”
“Sing a Song of Sixpence” gets similar treatment, with the narrator of Yolen’s “Song of the Vegetarian Princess” saying she doesn’t want to see four and twenty blackbirds “baked into a pie / No, I’d rather see them all / flying in the sky.” And in Dotlich’s retelling, the young pie maker gets attacked by blackbirds and wonders why anyone would want to eat them at all: “Blackberries make sweeter pies any day.”
The goal of their book, the authors write, is to inspire children to come up with their own variations on Mother Goose rhymes. “Write a funny poem or a serious one. Use your own imagination to create magic. Enjoy the joy.”