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| Rapunzel by Paul O. Zelinsky |
Book Summary:
This retelling of
the classic fairy tale begins with a woman expecting her first child. The woman
looks over the wall into the garden of a sorceress and becomes fixated on a bed
of rapunzel leaves. She longs so desperately for the leafy greens that
she puts her health in peril and her husband scales the wall to retrieve the
rapunzel for his wife, so that she does not die. Instead of satisfying her
craving it only amplified it, and on the husband’s next attempt he is caught by
the sorceress. The sorceress agrees to spare the life of the man and his wife
in exchange for the child she bears. The sorceress names the baby Rapunzel and
takes very good care of her. On Rapunzel’s twelth birthday the sorceress sends
her to live in a high tower in the woods, with no entrance or exit, to protect
her from the evils of the world. The sorceress visited Rapunzel daily by
climbing her hair to the top of the tower. One day a prince heard Rapunzel
singing and watched the sorceress climb her hair into the tower. The next day
the prince called out to Rapunzel to let down her hair and he climbed up to
meet her. Rapunzel and the prince fall in love and have their own marriage
ceremony high up in the tower, all the while keeping their relationship a
secret from the sorceress. When Rapunzel’s dress becomes tight the sorceress
knows immediately what has happened and in a rage cuts off her hair and
banishes her to a wild country to raise her children alone. The sorceress then
waits for the prince to return. When the prince learns what has happened to
Rapunzel he is distraught and falls from the tower, blinding himself. After a
year of wandering aimlessly, the prince hears Rapunzel’s sweet singing and the
two are reunited and the prince meets his twin children for the first time.
Rapunzel’s tears heal the prince’s vision and they return to his kingdom to
live happily ever after.
Zelinsky, P. O., Beniker, A., Stevens, J., & Dutton Children's Books (Firm). (1997).
Rapunzel. New York, NY: Dutton Children's Books.
My impressions:
I found this story
to be quite endearing and was pleasantly surprised to find the sorceress
resembling a mother who was not ready to let her child grow up, rather than a
cruel and unreasonable monster. The oil paintings were breathtaking and created
page upon page of beautiful images that captured my attention completely. I
found the story enticing in that the sorceress truly loves and cares for
Rapunzel as her own child, and this is further depicted in the rich
illustrations through the loving way she holds her as a baby and watches her
grow into a young lady. I felt that the sorceress was resisting letting go of
the beautiful Rampunzel and that is why she barricaded her into the tower – but
the tower is not the ominous tower I remember from my childhood tales, rather
it is a place of beauty and luxury. I think the tale finds a poetic way to
demonstrate the struggle that many mothers have in letting go of their
daughters for the first time.
Professional review:
Zelinsky does a star turn with this breathtaking interpretation of a
favorite fairy tale. Daringly--and effectively--mimicking the masters of
Italian Renaissance painting, he creates a primarily Tuscan setting. His
Rapunzel, for example, seems a relative of Botticelli's immortal red-haired
beauties, while her tower appears an only partially fantastic exaggeration of a
Florentine bell tower. For the most part, his bold experiment brilliantly
succeeds: the almost otherworldly golden light with which he bathes his
paintings has the effect of consecrating them, elevating them to a grandeur
befitting their adoptive art-historical roots. If at times his compositions and
their references to specific works seem a bit self-conscious, these cavils are
easily outweighed by his overall achievement.
The text, like the art, has a rare complexity, treating Rapunzel's
imprisonment as her sorceress-adopted mother's attempt to preserve her from the
effects of an awakening sexuality. Again like the art, this strategy may
resonate best with mature readers. Young children may be at a loss, for
example, when faced with the typically well-wrought but elliptical passage in
which the sorceress discovers Rapunzel's liaisons with the prince when the girl
asks for help fastening her dress (as her true mother did at the story's
start): "'It is growing so tight around my waist, it doesn't want to fit
me anymore.' Instantly the sorceress understood what Rapunzel did not." On
the other hand, with his sophisticated treatment, Zelinsky demonstrates a point
established in his unusually complete source notes: that timeless tales like
Rapunzel belong to adults as well as children.
[Review of the book Rapunzel, by Paul O. Zelinsky]. (29 Sept. 1997). Publishers Weekly 244
(40), 89. Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com
Library Uses:
This book would be excellent on display for the Caldecott collection, or
used in a lesson introducing different styles of art, specifically Renaissance
era artwork and Italian influences on art in the book. The book also would be
an appropriate complement to a fairy tales book grouping or as a whimsical
addition to a unit concerning plants and gardening.
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