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Summary
Summary
This is a story about darkness and light, about sorrow and joy, about something lost and something found. This is a story about Love.
Cinderella's story has been told over and over, but never has it been touched by the kind of magic found in this book. Mary Blair painted the original pictures for Walt Disney's incomparable animated film, and here her elegant art is gathered together as a picture book for the first time. Cynthia Rylant's stories about hardscrabble lives have won not only awards and honors, but hearts. Who better to take a young girl from the darkness of her garret room to the light and brilliance of a ballroom?
Together these two great artists have created something quite astonishing: a Cinderella that is breathtaking, heartrending, and joyous, both for those who are coming to the tale for the very first time, and for those who think they know it well.
Author Notes
Cynthia Rylant was born on June 6, 1954 in Hopewell, Virginia. She attended and received degrees at Morris Harvey College, Marshall University, and Kent State University.
Rylant worked as an English professor and at the children's department of a public library, where she first discovered her love of children's literature.
She has written more than 100 children's books in English and Spanish, including works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her novel Missing May won the 1993 Newbery Medal and A Fine White Dust was a 1987 Newbery Honor book. Rylant wrote A Kindness, Soda Jerk, and A Couple of Kooks and Other Stories, which were named as Best Book for Young Adults. When I was Young in the Mountains and The Relatives Came won the Caldecott Award.
She has many popular picture books series, including Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter and Tabby and High-Rise Private Eyes. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-This retelling of "Cinderella" has been created around Blair's stunning artwork, conceptual pieces originally painted for the Disney animated film. Rylant's narrative has the formal, high-romantic tone of a Victorian romance novel, recasting the tale of a poor orphan girl mistreated by a callous stepmother into "a story about Love." In fact, "Love" appears repeatedly, seeming to take on a personality of its own and dominating every other aspect of the plot. Readers are told that Cinderella "-wished for one thing only: Love." This hammered emphasis, related in sentiment-fraught elevated language, becomes even more prevalent as the narrative continues. When the prince first sees Cinderella: "How does a young man find his maiden? His heart leads him. He finds her in a room. He asks her to dance. And when he touches her, he knows." And so on. There are other minor caveats; for example, the statement, "a child of rags became a vision," does not indicate the nature of the vision or say anything about Cinderella's clothing. The paintings, however, are another story; they are spare and expressionistic, reflecting trends in the art of animation during the 1950s. The darkness of Cinderella's room, the misty blues of the royal castle and rich reds of its interior, the minimalist and energetic lines of the fairy godmother-not even a little bit sentimental, these images are a welcome counterpoint to the overrich text, and may rescue the book from oblivion. Maybe.-Marian Drabkin, formerly at Richmond Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
There has to be a good reason to produce yet another version of this tale, and the opportunity to showcase Blair's stunning artwork provides it. Before her career in children's book illustration (I Can Fly!), Blair was one of the top artists at Walt Disney Studios, where her whimsical style and exuberant palette dominated the design of many classic Disney animated features, including Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Animators took their character and color cues from her conceptual paintings, like these Blair created for Disney's Cinderella (1950), here paired with an elegant retelling by Newbery Medalist Rylant, which begins: "This is a story about darkness and light, about sorrow and joy, about something lost and something found. This is a story about Love." Aficionados of the film will recognize the multi-turreted castle, the patterned wallpaper, the fanciful backgrounds and stylized flora. The haughty portrait of the evil stepmother, done in exaggerated profile, perfectly captures this imperious villain with "black longing" in her heart. Blair's Cinderella, however, is not the honeyed version of the film, but a straw-haired waif with a downcast demeanor. Children familiar with the film may also wonder where the singing mice are. Indeed, while pint-size romantics will lap this up, the book's greatest appeal may lie with students and fans of Disneyana. Here's a picture book that will find its way onto collectors' shelves, as well as onto the syllabi of college film and design courses. Ages 4-8. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Preschool, Primary) "Cinderella looked out toward the world that stretched far and away from her small dark room, and she wished for one thing only: Love. Every day Cinderella wished for Love." Stripped of the cheer-amidst-the-ashes spin that marked the Disney movie, Rylant's emotional retelling, accompanied by romantic archival artwork from the designer who inspired the look of the classic Disney film, gets down to the gritty basics. Talking mice and birds would succumb to hypothermia before staging a musical number in the dank scullery where Cinderella silently works, waiting for "Love" to find her. Though Rylant's insistence on that capital L (and the theatrics it epitomizes) becomes self-conscious, for the most part her text proves a good match for Blair's impressionistic, spun-sugar scenes of gilded (except for the scullery) interiors and ethereally lit exteriors. In a number of the illustrations, the prince and Cinderella are just faceless miniatures, dwarfed by the ornate scenery against which Cinderella finally realizes her destiny and -- cue the orchestra -- lives with her be-Loved happily ever after. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In this "bibbity-bobbity-boo"-less rendition of the classic film's plot, Rylant focuses on larger themes--"Every day Cinderella wished for Love"--rather than characters, crafting a lyrical romance free of sympathetic small animals, songs, much dialogue or even (with the titular exception) names. This interpretation suits the art to a tee. Blair was the original concept designer for the movie (and for many other Disney cartoons), and her color sketches, reproduced here as full-page scenes, have less to do with the small, generic figures in each scene than the flow of line and drapery, the lighting and general look of the costumes, the palace and other sets. The visual connection between these rough pictures and the finished film is tenuous at best, and though unusually perceptive children might be able to make it, this is really more of a spin-off than a tie-in. Its main audience will likely be drawn either by nostalgia, curiosity about the animated filmmaking process, or the enduring appeal of the tale itself. (Fairy tale. 7-11) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
