East of the Sun and West of the Moon
Old Tales of the North
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
"East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North" is a collection of Norwegian folk tales, collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in the mid-nineteenth century.
Scandinavian folk tales have had many interpretations through the years, but never have they been so beautifully depicted as in this wonderful edition by the Danish illustrator Kay Rasmus Nielsen, the master of Art Nouveau and fantasy. Nielsen was popular in the early 20th century - the "golden age of illustration" and joined the ranks of Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in enjoying the success of the gift books of the early 20th century. He is also known for his collaborations with Disney, for whom he contributed many story sketches and illustrations, and especially for his work on this text, lavishing its pages with 25 intricately detailed color and numerous black-and-white images that showcase his unique and other-worldly style and complement this folk tale perfectly.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This expansively illustrated edition of a well-loved epic romance, told here in Sir George Webbe Dasent's 1859 translation from the Norwegian, has lost none of its Gothic beauty and irresistible power. Dasent's translation is a real page-turner, told in a relaxed, conversational style that manages to be at once soothing and suspenseful. Readers will follow eagerly the plight of the beautiful, unnamed lassie, who must travel to a far-off kingdom to rescue her beloved prince from the clutches of an evil--and very ugly--bride. Only a rather swift resolution sounds a slightly jarring note in the otherwise engrossing tale. Lynch's sweeping paintings in dark greens and browns, with their large close-ups and exciting shifts in perspective, expertly capture the story's heroic scale. Several spreads are especially noteworthy: the dizzying bird's-eye-view of the heroine and her bear, dwarfed by the palace's massive architecture; the North Wind, rising from the mists like a bearded Old Testament patriarch, carrying the speck of a girl on his back as the seas roil below. The book's lavish endpapers, in the style of an Old World cartographer, point the way to this enticing kingdom east o' the sun and west o' the moon. Ages 4-up.