Sleeping Beauty (Hardcover)

~ K.Y. Craft (Author, Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

So perfect are the Pre-Raphaelite details and gestures that it's easy to imagine Kinuko Craft's (Adventures of Tom Thumb) paintings hanging in a gallery. Her husband Mahlon Craft's enhanced version of Sleeping Beauty affords wide scope for the artist's romanticism. In a new episode at the outset, for example, the queen meets a frog that predicts the birth of her daughter; in the facing art, the queen, dressed in a diaphanous white gown, languidly loosens her hair ribbon, while the frog, brought forward by cunning attention to light and detail, waits to speak to her. The backdrop is a dark forest, and the effect is properly otherworldly. Farther on, when the king and queen discover the evil fairy's handiwork, the good fairy comes to ease their grief; Craft portrays the fairy descending from gilded clouds, driving a chariot drawn by dragons. The fairies are transparent, like spirits; the evil fairy is a gothic horror in black draperies. Aurora is ethereally lovely, the landscapes magnificent and the palace splendid. Families aiming to assemble a library of classic fairy tales may well settle on this as the definitive Sleeping Beauty. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 1-4-Through this sumptuous presentation, Princess Aurora joins that elite group of personages whose stories are ornamented by Craft's lush illustrative style. Building on the Grimms' shortened version, this retelling of the classic tale of kind and vengeful fairies, a 100-year sleep, and a determined prince is thoroughly embellished both literally and visually. The carefully posed and composed oil-on-watercolor paintings are imbued with lyrical enchantment and capture the elegance of 15th-century Europe. Charming details are everywhere: an illuminated manuscript-style letter opens each page, often incorporating details from the story, and the artwork includes such delightful touches as the grandiose dragon-drawn chariot of the 12th fairy and the somnolent canine guardian she gives Princess Aurora. The phrasing and vocabulary are appropriately formal and the pacing is dramatic, with pivotal moments commanding full-page spreads. A thoroughly enchanting and luxurious addition for any fairy-tale collection.
Carol Ann Wilson, Westfield Memorial Library, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587171201
• ISBN-13: 978-1587171208
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #132,149 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most beautifully illustrated childrens' book ever, May 16, 2003

By A Customer

I have four children and a large collection of childrens' books, including some wonderfully illustrated classics. However, this book has the most beautiful illustrations I've ever seen. I am a fan of Kinuko Craft's other books, but this one truly oudoes them all. Sleeping Beauty is a wonderful treat for kids, and anyone who appreciates truly beautiful art. Its classic story line and amazing illustrations make it the best bedtime story book I've seen.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty!, January 24, 2003

By A Customer

The five stars are for the artwork. Ms. Craft's work is brilliant and, as always, I find no fault with it. The style in this book reminds me of flemish tapestries, though some paintings seem to have a very strong Renaissance feel to them. Also noteworthy are the illuminated letters that introduce each page of text. They rival those of Medieval times. They employ a labyrinthine quality and I enjoyed gazing on these letters repeatedly, as I did the large paintings.

In addition to technical achievement with her lush details, Ms. Craft demonstrates a strong ability to tell a story with pictures in this volume. I very much admire this aspect to her work and I think she uses extraneous details wisely. Ms. Craft's details always enhance the narrative. They add something without giving the sense of simply being tacked into the works. For example, a mermaid child on the fountain goes through the enchantment with Beauty and leaves a little something to wonder about. This character is shown on a fountain in a painting in the opening where Beauty is playing a 12-stringed instrument. You wonder if the child is real or a statue. Later, you can the watery little thing sleeping peacefully inside the fountain when the prince arrives. I found this element to add a bit of mystery and a sense of old fashioned enchantment that has ancient, classical roots.

Another character that lives in the paintings is the German Shepard Dog that you can see clearly sleeping at Beauty's side by her bed. He's introduced earlier, at the side of the fairy, when she flies in with her dragons. There, he's hardly noticeable, but evidently, this handsome dog is left behind to guard the princess. He's even seen in the last full page painting, adding a symbolic element of domesticity and safety, as he sits there and calmly gazes at the reader from his corner. I found him charmingly reminiscent of flemish Renaissance paintings.

I think that Mahlon Craft tried to do the same thing with his ancient frog. This frog swims with Beauty's mother, and to repay her for her songs, he fortells the birth of Beauty. I think I missed the frog's real meaning, if there was one. I found him distracting, creating a slow start for the book. The frog only seemed to be added in for the sake of stretching Mr. Kinuko's narrative, of giving the reader the prophecy in the space of a page, not a paragraph.

Another strange element that didn't seem to mesh tightly into the rest of Mr. Craft's narrative was the negligence of Beauty's parents on her 16th birthday. They leave her alone as they've gone out to buy her a very special gift. How does that make any sense? They are characterized as having feelings for their daughter and they had been warned that she would be afflicted on this day. How could they have been so callous to have left her? They learned their lesson about ignoring the 13th fairy right away, you'd think that they would take these things more seriously! This is the one place in Mahlon's story that I thought showed a weakness and could have been more thoroughly developed.

I have read published reviews of other collaborations done by the Crafts in which Mahlon Craft's writing was characterized as a bit bland and not matching his wife's work for artistic merit. I have agreed at least in part with that assesment until I collected this latest book and got past the strange, bumpy opening. In all fairness, I think that Mahlon's star is rising with the remainder of this text. The strange little frog and the neglect of the King and Queen aside, Mr. Craft creates a lovely narrative that sounds elegant when read aloud. His use of language is soft, gentle and evocative, at times an almost perfect match for the sleepy tapestry of paintings Ms. Craft provides.

I was most pleased with how Mr. Craft's story is a love story, and most of the versions of Sleeping Beauty that I have encountered don't exercise this emotion in the narrative. The other stories seem to focus almost exclusively on magic and retribution- the prince is merely an agent of change and offers little else to the narrative. In this book, however, there is an element of love that gives the story much of its meaning.

Only one prince, her soul mate, could awaken Beauty, for example. He isn't some fellow who comes along at the right time, he's special! His special quality is why he gets through the brambles: the other princes only "disappear" (and don't die in vain, as they do in other stories.) The value of being true to your heart, of waiting as long as necessary to choose the right love to live your life with is strongly affirmed. Mahlon's Beauty gazes on her prince with "tender glances" and informs him that, "These many long years only you have filled my dreams, for none other could awaken me from my spell. Now in love's sweet name at last our hearts will together be eternally bound."

This is sweet stuff, more poetic than others of Mr. Craft's I think, and where his cleverness shines most brightly.

In sum, I see two stories being told. One is in paint. It is enchanting, the brainchild of a true master who excels at her craft. The other story is told in the text. It is not bad, by any means, and is fairly pretty. It sounds pretty and makes sense most of the way through. It is the work of someone who has gotten better but is still outshone by others in his field and by the glorious paintings that they seem to have been written to support but not equal in beauty. A truly extraordinary book would be the one where the text matches the paintings, but with Kinuko Craft this may be too great a challenge for the children's book industry's wordsmiths. In my opinion, few modern works ever come close to happy marriage of beautiful text and beautiful pictures, as we see in the example of past masters, such as Howard Pyle. I do hope the Crafts keep up the effort- we are in need of some new timeless classics for this generation of readers and readers in the future.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lush and ornate Sleeping Beauty, October 10, 2002

By	Heidi Anne Heiner (SurLaLune Fairy Tales.com) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Although the tale is well-known and almost as popular as Cinderella, there are few picture books of Sleeping Beauty currently in print. The Crafts have helped to fill the void with this lushly written and illustrated version of the classic tale. The tale is romantic and Kinuko Craft's illustrations are her usual high standard, this time with a baroque whimsy that will delight young and old readers. I have seen grown-ups reaching to thumb through the book as often as the children in my library and at the bookstore. If you are not familiar with Craft's illustrations, this book is a perfect introduction while presenting a fairy tale princess in all of her baroque splendor. It's also great if you have been looking for that perfect bedtime fairy tale so rarely seen in this format. ...