The Duchess of Whimsy
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The great New Yorker artist Peter de Seve teams up with the author of bestselling Toy Boat in a slightly outrageous fairy tale.
The Duchess of Whimsy is fancy and fussy—and definitely not ordinary—surrounding herself with wild friends, fabulous foods, and fancy dress. The Earl of Norm (ho hum) is completely ordinary, but he adores the Duchess. She ignores him, until the chef gets sick, and her friends have to make a super supper—which includes tracking down truffles, spinning sugar stars, and looking for quail eggs.
But the Earl is hungry! He sneaks off to an ordinary grilled cheese sandwich—and suddenly takes the Duchess’s eye. Maybe there’s something to simplicity after all. Maybe there’s something to the Earl after all . . .
This deliciously told and illustrated love story by the remarkable de Sèves shows how utterly charming and extraordinary a picture book can be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite its witty tongue-in-cheek tone and quirky and exuberant artwork, this love story about an earl and an unconventional duchess blurs the line between "ordinary" and "extraordinary." The narrator insists that the extravagant duchess of Whimsy is "the life of the party" while the earl of Norm is "as normal as they come." But the earl, whose Ichabod Crane body is shown dressed in courtly finery, seems as eccentric as the rest of the courtiers, who Peter de S ve gleefully depicts with exaggerated hairstyles and facial expressions and wearing oceans of fabric. He wears a jaunty feather in his tall, lopsided hat, and in an effort to impress the duchess, he presents her with a giraffe who tries to eat the foliage on the courtier's hats. He even composes "sugary poetry comparing the duchess to a squid, a platypus and a penguin." Nonetheless, she continues to pronounce him "too ordinary!" It's not until the earl of Norm shares his ordinary grilled cheese sandwich with the duchess that she wonders if she's misjudged him, and in the happily-ever-after end, they both find each other to be "simply extraordinary!" Ages 4 up.
