Austin, Lost in America. By
Jef Czekaj. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $17.99.
The Elves and the Shoemaker.
Retold and illustrated by Paul Galdone. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $8.99.
Rumpelstiltskin. Retold and
illustrated by Paul Galdone. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $26.99.
A modern fairy tale wrapped
around a geography lesson, Jef Czekaj’s Austin,
Lost in America is the story of a dog who grows up at a pet shop and
decides to take his fate into his own hands by escaping and finding just the
right place to live – somewhere. Czekaj calls it “A Geography Adventure,” and
so it is, as Austin starts out in Maine (where his original home, Sketchy’s Discount
Pets, is located) and works his way through all 50 states, learning a thing or
two about each one in the process. Maine, for instance, produces 99% of all the
blueberries in the United States, and 100 million pounds of lobsters are caught
off its coast – but Austin is allergic to blueberries and lobsters, so no Maine
for him. On and on he goes, learning things about Massachusetts (Fig Newton
cookies are named after the town of Newton), Connecticut (where the lollipop was
created), Florida (which has 663 miles of beaches), South Carolina (which
contains the world’s largest fire hydrant), West Virginia (where the world’s
largest water-tasting competition is held), and on and on. “Every state had fun
things to see and do, but none was a perfect fit,” writes Czekaj, so Austin
marches on, also taking the bus and train and even an airplane from region to
region so he can explore all the states – and pick up informational tidbits
such as the fact that Washington is the state that grows the most apples, Idaho
has the largest potato chip in the world, California has the nation’s highest population
of cats (definitely not the right place for Austin), Utah has the world’s
largest known natural bridge, a town in Wisconsin is the world’s yo-yo capital,
and North Dakota hosts the annual World Champion Turtle Races. There is so much
to see, so much to do, so many places to visit, but never just the right place
for Austin. But then, at the very end of his travels, Austin finds himself in
Texas, where there happens to be a city named…Austin! And he knows this is
where he belongs – especially when a friendly little girl spots him and says
she has been looking for a puppy just like him. So Austin’s long trek comes to
an end, he has his very own family at last, and when we leave him, he is
sending postcards of greeting to his friends at Sketchy’s Discount Pets in
Waldo, Maine – a real town, and also a tribute to Martin Handford’s “Where’s
Waldo?” books, which surely influenced Czekaj in creating this one.
Unlike modern fairy tales
along the lines of Austin’s, old-fashioned stories from the Grimm brothers
tended to be, well, pretty doggoned grim. Never intended for children, the
stories were filled with violence, sex and all sorts of racial and religious prejudices
that were systematically cleaned up during the 19th century
(starting in later editions of the Grimms’ own collection) to make the tales
palatable for children and for right-thinking Victorian families. There were,
however, a few Grimm fairy tales whose message was one of warmth and inclusion,
and Paul Galdone (1907-1986) retold and illustrated one of them in 1984: The Shoemaker and the Elves. Galdone’s
words are based on Lucy Crane’s translation of the Grimms’ German, but the
words – telling about a poor shoemaker visited nightly by elven cobblers who
make beautiful shoes for him to sell – are only part of the book’s charm. The
rest lies in Galdone’s moody but apt illustrations, using many dark colors to
show the initial living situation of the poverty-stricken shoemaker and his
wife, then contrasting those scenes with those of the naked elves (wearing only
very long, bright orange stocking caps) at their work. The kind shoemaker
decides to thank the elves for their assistance by making them clothing, and he
and his wife produce tiny clothes that are far brighter than the ones they wear
themselves, leaving them out one night for the elves to find. The delighted
elves are shown donning the clothes, singing and dancing their joy and vowing
nevermore to be cobblers – and indeed, the story says they were never seen
again. But all still ends happily, for the riches made possible by the elves’
help and the shoemaker’s own goodness remain with the man and his wife all
their lives. This is a lovely story of unexplained magic (the reasons for the
elves making shoes, choosing this particular shoemaker, and being naked are
never given), the moral being that if you are good, good things will come to
you sooner or later, in one way or another. There is nothing exceptional about that
message (and, indeed, the story is told without a moral, both in the original
and in Galdone’s version); but young readers will likely enjoy the lack of
preachiness in the tale, as well as the highly engaging way Galdone retells and
illustrates it.
A more-typical Grimm tale retold and
illustrated in Galdone’s manner is Rumpelstiltskin.
But while The Elves and the Shoemaker
is in the “Folk Tale Classics” series of small-scale hardcover books, and
Galdone’s Rumpelstiltskin is also
available in that format, the new version of this 1985 book is something quite
different. It is a giant-size paperback: not a traditional coffee-table book,
but large enough to cover a small coffee table completely. At 14 inches wide
and 17 high, this is a book whose two-page spreads open to 28 inches – scarcely
something to be read to a child in one’s lap. It is the sort of book that
invites parents and kids to sprawl on the floor and revel in the story and its
illustrations. The ones Galdone produces here, because they are so large, show
his technique clearly, and also display the cleverness with which he packs his
pictures with ancillary characters and elements that are not in the story but
that add to its impact. In Rumpelstiltskin,
there is the king’s court fool, who watches the evolving action carefully even
though he is no part of it, and whose expressions make it seem that he knows
more about what is going on than the principal characters do. There are the dog
and cat in the new queen’s bedchamber, as awake as she is while she tries to
think of the little man’s name. There is the squirrel on the last page, staring
quizzically at the hole in the earth into which Rumpelstiltskin has vanished
after the queen correctly identifies him. Galdone hints at but never overtly
discusses the unpleasant elements of this story, which come through even in the
modified version familiar to families today. It is the avaricious and
bloodthirsty king, not the helpful Rumpelstiltskin, who, it can be argued, is
the real villain here – and Galdone shows him to be haughty, demanding and
cruel-looking. Rumpelstiltskin is actually helpful, not only in spinning the straw
into gold but also in allowing the miller’s daughter a way out of the bargain
she makes in desperation to save her life: to give the little man her
first-born child after she becomes queen. The Grimms’ audience would have
understood that the little man is inherently evil because of who he is, no matter what he does;
and the story has decided anti-Semitic overtones as well. Those have long since
been scrubbed out and are certainly no part of Galdone’s retelling, but they do
explain why Rumpelstiltskin is the “bad guy” of the story even though it is the
king who is cruel and greedy and the miller’s daughter who wants a way out of
her promise to the little man. Galdone’s retelling is perfectly appropriate for
today’s children, and the very large format of this new edition provides plenty
of enjoyment not only in the carefully chosen words but also in very
well-crafted illustrations that were obviously made with loving care and that
today’s families can examine here in as much detail as they wish.
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