Flower Fables
-
- $0.99
Publisher Description
THE summer moon shone brightly down upon the sleeping earth, while far away
from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. Fire-flies hung in bright clusters on
the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood
gazing, in very wonder, at the little Elves, who lay among the fern-leaves,
swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the
mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal
in honor of the night.
Under the shade of a wild rose sat the Queen and her little Maids of
Honor, beside the silvery mushroom where the feast was spread.
"Now, my friends," said she, "to while away the time till the bright moon
goes down, let us each tell a tale, or relate what we have done or learned this
day. I will begin with you, Sunny Lock," added she, turning to a lovely little
Elf, who lay among the fragrant leaves of a primrose.
With a gay smile, "Sunny Lock" began her story.
"As I was painting the bright petals of a blue bell, it told me this
tale."
- Excerpted from "Flower Fables"
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Written for Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, Ellen, when Alcott was 16, and first published in 1855, these six prosy fairy tales were chosen from a 1992 collection, Louisa May Alcott's Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories, edited by Daniel Shealy; Shealy provides an informative afterword here. Readers meet a cast of elves, fairies, brownies and sprites with such Shakespearean names as Willy Wisp, Moonbeam and Thistledown, and the children who occasionally dally with them. Thinly disguised morality lessons told in an over-upholstered style, they instruct the audience in the importance of various virtues. In "The Frost King," for example, elves resolve to conquer the ice-hearted ruler of winter through peaceable means ("Let us teach you how beautiful sunshine and love and happy work can make you"). More than a little dated, the stories grow tedious with lofty homilies (e.g., "little Annie dwelt like a sunbeam in her home, each day growing richer in the love of others and happier in herself"). Preiss's (The Pig's Alphabet) garish artwork further hampers an emotional connection to the stories. The lack of tonal subtlety is aggravated by a self-consciously multicultural-esque grouping of fairy folk with oversize but misshapen eyes and bizarrely pointed ears and chins. Even the typeface, which has distractingly flowery ligatures, is overdone. All but the most die-hard Alcott fans can skip this one. Ages 5-12.
