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Summary
Summary
"McClintock's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations emulate old-fashioned wood engravings, and the traditional story seems suffused with magic...A splendid (and kindspirited) retelling of a well-known tale." - Publishers Weekly, starred review
Author Notes
Children's book author and illustrator Barbara McClintock was born in Clinton, New Jersey on May 6, 1955. She attended Jamestown College in North Dakota before moving to New York City on the recommendation of Maurice Sendak, whom she called to ask advice about how to become a children's book illustrator. She briefly studied at The Art Students League of New York.
Before meeting Jim Henson and illustrating books for his television series Fraggle Rock, she designed characters for television commercials for an animation studio and illustrated textbooks. Her first book, The Heartaches of a French Cat, won the New York Times Best Books Award. She won this award three more times as well as a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor award for Dahlia. Her other works include Animal Fables from Aesop, The Fantastic Drawings of Danielle, The Gingerbread Man, Adele and Simon, Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary, and The Battle of Luke and Longnose.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
McClintock (Goldilocks and the Three Bears) salutes the visual styles of Caldecott and Greenaway in her delectable picture books. This Cinderella, based on Perrault's version, takes place in a sumptuous, Versailles-inspired palace where the heroine sleeps "on a thin mattress in the dingy attic" above her stepsisters' brocaded shell-pink boudoir. After the stepsisters depart for the royal ball, Cinderella's fairy godmother appears, draped in seafoam-green ruffles and lighting the dusk-blue evening with a radiant glass orb on a slender stick. Two nights in a row, the godmother conjures a rococo golden carriage, and Cinderella gets not one but two outfits, first a ballooning pink gown with a floral headdress, and then a champagne-gold and lavender number that will floor young fashionistas. McClintock's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations emulate old-fashioned wood engravings, and the traditional story seems suffused with magic. Yet she adds contemporary touches too, in her balance of fast-moving comics sequences and closely observed moments. Cinderella and the smitten prince "danced all night, chatting with the ease of old, close friends," and at the end, the former chambermaid introduces each of her stepsisters to "a suitable nobleman... They were all terribly sorry about how they had treated her, and everyone lived happily ever after, forever and a day." A splendid (and kind-spirited) retelling of a well-known tale. Ages 4-8. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary) McClintock's pre-ball Cinderella looks as if she's stepped out of the pages of a Kate Greenaway picture book; despite her tattered clothing, she is all innocence and sweetness. The lavish furnishings and costumes, however, clearly set this version of the Perrault tale in the magnificent French court of Louis XIV. In McClintock's intricate pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations, bedrooms boast canopied beds with ornate velvet draping, gold mirrors adorn the boudoirs, and crystal chandeliers hang from palace ceilings. McClintock pays no less attention to the clothing and coiffures of the day: all the female gentry appear in beribboned gowns, their male counterparts in lacy cutaways; both sport fashionable powdered wigs. To balance the grandeur of the court and accent the humility and goodness of Cinderella, a plain gray cat, unidentified in the unpretentious text, accompanies Cinderella throughout her travails -- to be rewarded on the final page, following Cinderella's marriage to the prince, with a gilded, richly upholstered chair. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
K-Gr. 3. Here's a gentle version of Perrault's classic tale: no stepsister cuts off her toes to fit a shoe and everyone is forgiven at the end. McClintock places her sweet Cinderella in the Paris of Louis XIV , with period fashion and interior and architectural detail from Versailles and the Paris Opera. Pen, india ink, and watercolor make for delightful dancing lines and exquisite color: Cinderella's first ball gown is a profusion of roses under a plum overskirt, and her hair is decorated with a huge rose trellis. The stepsisters, one fat and one thin (both mean), and the prince, a graceful boy in a powdered wig, make a pleasing supporting cast. Cinderella's little gray cat appears on almost every page. --GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright 2006 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-McClintock's faithful adaptation combines readable text and enchanting pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations filled with minute details of architecture and dress from the era of Louis XIV. The artist's aesthetic sense is evident in the layout of text and illustrations, for she has carefully placed pages of vignettes-some of them quite humorous-as "breathers" between the larger, more detailed spreads. The smoothly flowing story, lightened by snippets of conversation, has been divided so that each page has more white space and artwork than print. This fresh, appealing version of the perennial favorite belongs in every collection.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
McClintock adapts Charles Perrault's version of the familiar tale, taking inspiration from the fashionable pretensions of the court of Louis XIV for her richly detailed watercolor and line illustrations. Her retelling is lively but economical, the better to allow the fulsome double-page spreads and episodic spot illustrations to reign. For several spreads, McClintock depicts two linked scenes. In one, Cinderella lies on a sleeping pallet in her crumbling upstairs garret while the two stepsisters, wielding hairbrushes and face cream, preen before a soaring, gilded mirror in their richly appointed bedchamber. While children will enjoy McClintock's tiny liberties with Perrault's narrative (Cinderella's godmother transforms the pumpkin with the magic words "FOOMUS BALOOMUS!"), they will be most apt to pore over the pictures, locating Cinderella's cat in the domestic scenes, noting the stepsisters' over-the-top coiffures and ball gowns and spotting the godmother, glowing wand in hand, as she observes from a distance Cinderella's garden wedding. Charming. (source note) (Picture book/fairy tale. 5-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
