Category: alternative interpretations
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Stone Soup Served Three Ways
Stone Soup by Ann McGovern (1968) has illustrations copyrighted in 1986 by Winslow Pinney Pels. (That’s a cute reversal of numbers: 68 and 86) The cover shows only a little old lady and a young adult. The younger one is barefoot. One foot is wearing a bandage. This story begins with a young man walking…
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The House that Jack Built – Illustration Matters
In The House That Jack Built (1954, 1982), every character is smiling, except a few chickens, the rat, and the dog. I’m referring to a Little Golden Book Classic. This book is a happy-go-lucky rendition of that familiar story in the public domain. With blueprints in hand, Jack builds a small house. As he stands on a ladder to…
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The Picture Book Club
I have a subscription to The Picture Book Club. The theme of my subscription is “In Translation”, so I receive books first published in other languages. All but one of these stories has been quite gentle. The content more original than I’ve seen in my browsing. The illustrations also unlike the homogeneous digital art that…
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Wisdom wins the race
Susan Lowell adapted a famous fable in her book The Tortoise and the Jackrabbit (1977) to feature creatures of the American Southwest. Her characters are an elderly tortoise and a jackrabbit. I found this book in 2019, worked with it, and set it aside. In 2024, I picked it up again and discovered that Jim…
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But they cheated
The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll is the story about a competition in Mouseville to build the biggest snowman. Clayton and Desmond realize that they can win if they work together. I’ve read this story many times. I accepted the message that collaboration has its benefits. Only now do I suddenly wonder why the…
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