Rumpelstiltskin
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In the follow-up to the highly acclaimed, instant bestseller, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, comes the second brilliant and highly anticipated fairy tale retelling from the New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Award-winning creators, Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis.
Once upon a time there was a clever girl with a not-so-clever father. When her father claims she can spin straw into gold, the king forces the girl to perform this impossible task. She has no other choice than to accept a strange deal from a mysterious little man. But when he arrives and attempts to collect the debt, the fiendish trickster Rumpelstiltskin discovers that he is the one who has been tricked! This is the second in the groundbreaking new collection of masterfully retold fairy tales crafted by one of today's most celebrated and esteemed authors, Mac Barnett, paired with the stunning illustrations of the acclaimed and award-winning creator, Carson Ellis.
With Barnett's signature pacing and wit, his subversive storytelling style and narrative voice, and Ellis's stunning folk-art style, this retelling of Rumpelstiltskin will introduce this classic story to a new generation of readers!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following his reimagining of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," Barnett retells "Rumpelstiltskin," his wisecracking lines (the miller is "a nice enough guy, but he had a big mouth") joined by the medieval elegance of gouache spreads by Caldecott Honoree Ellis. After the miller jests to the visiting king about his own daughter's ability to spin gold from straw, the daughter is shown hunched in despair within a royal room. The small, cunning man who appears out of nowhere will spin the king's ever-larger piles of straw into gold, but he demands rewards in return—she offers first her jewelry, then her firstborn. After she weds the king and bears a child, the little man promises mercy if she can guess his name. A list is made and read aloud, and hilarity bubbles to the surface ("Jay? Shawn?" "No! No!" "Danladi? Octavius? Cuthbert?" "No! No! No!") as the scroll of names is shown drifting and looping around the page. Short, punchy text juices the tale's momentum ("Deal," the girl replies to the wily man's offers), while portraits trace the miller's daughter's journey from frog-catching child to regal royal and back again in this haunting tale about the power of knowing someone's name. Most characters are portrayed with pale skin. Ages 4–8.
