The Birthday of the Infanta [Hardcover]

Oscar Wilde (Author), Leonard Lubin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0670169749 | ISBN-13: 978-0670169740 | Publication Date: September 10, 1979 | Edition: 1st

A grotesque dwarf falls in love with the beautiful Infanta.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gr. 5^-8. Russell, a well-known name in the comics-graphic novel universe, has made several other graphic novels out of well-known stories. Here, he transmutes Wilde's darkly sardonic tale, using much of Wilde's abundantly rich language. The Infanta, on her twelfth birthday, is a spoiled princess who resembles the famous Velazquez painting "Las Meninas." Her father, the king, still broods over her mother's death, but for the birthday celebration, dancing bears and Gypsies and jousts are brought out for her entertainment. So also is a little dwarf (who looks like the cartoon version of Quasimodo as a boy), whose dancing amuses the princess and the crowd, for he is misshapen and ugly. The princess gives him the white rose from her hair, and he searches the palace when she departs, looking for her. But the sight of himself in a mirror breaks his heart, and he dies. "For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts," proclaims the princess when she learns that he died of a broken heart. The art, in classic comics-graphic novel style, has the text in word balloons and the full-color pictures in frames, with expressive line and acid color, full of visual references. Older children will appreciate the edgy story and the mouth-filling language as well as the format. GraceAnne A. DeCandido --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 55 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile; 1st edition (September 10, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670169749
• ISBN-13: 978-0670169740
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,559,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford where, a disciple of Pater, he founded an aesthetic cult. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and his two sons were born in 1885 and 1886.
His novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and social comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), established his reputation. In 1895, following his libel action against the Marquess of Queesberry, Wilde was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for homosexual conduct, as a result of which he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), and his confessional letter De Profundis (1905). On his release from prison in 1897 he lived in obscurity in Europe, and died in Paris in 1900.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A tragic fairy tale, March 14, 2005

By 

Gary Selikow (Great Kush) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 2: The Young King & The Remarkable Rocket (Signed & Numbered Edition) (Hardcover)

A tragic fairy tale for older children, about the lavish birthday celebrations of the Spanish Infanta (Princess) and a hideous misshapen dwarf who is brought to perform for her birthday celebrations. He dreams of being the companion of the beautiful Infanta, but then in the palace he sees how ugly he is in a mirror, and dies of a broken heart.

Exquisitely written, in the poetic prose of Oscar Wilde:

'The Lizards also took an immense fancy to him, and when he grew tired of running about and flung himself down on the grass to rest, they played and romped all over him, and tried to amuse him in the best way they could. "Every one cannot be as beautiful as a lizard," "That would be too much to expect. And, though it sounds absurd to say so, he is not really so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's and does not look at him." The Lizards where extremely philosophical by nature, and often sat thinking for hours and hours together, when there was nothing else to do, or when the weather was too rainy for them to go out."