Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As clever as it is good-humored, November 18, 2008
Who knew Rapunzel had it in her? All those years spent locked away in that tower, waiting for some handsome young prince to come along and rescue her --- wait, she didn't need a man to get out of that predicament?
It turns out Rapunzel was actually a kick-butt heroine who had a feisty temperament and tenacity --- or at least that's how a trio of Hales have envisioned her. Shannon Hale, a Newbery Award-winning children's book author, has teamed up with her husband, Dean, to write RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE, which turns the original Brothers Grimm tale on its ear. They brought in the help of talented illustrator Nathan Hale (no relation) for help fleshing out the story.
RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE offers a thrilling reimagining of the fairy tale --- just look at the cover to see Rapunzel looking like she's straight out of the wild west. Inside, she's thrown into even more outrageous settings, all of which work somehow --- and it succeeds because of its unabashed spirit. The Hales seem like they're having a ball with this story, and they like to mix in generous helpings of other myths and legends to flesh out the action. (Also, a couple of other fairy tales find their way into the telling of RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE, but it would take an evil stepmother to give them away here.)
RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE sticks fairly close to the original at the beginning. Rapunzel is a young girl living with Mother Gothel, who rules over the land with an iron fist (and a little bit of witchcraft). They live in luxury (or boredom, to hear Rapunzel tell it), with Rapunzel having no idea what lies over the giant wall surrounding their castle. When she dares to spy over it one day, and finally meets her real mother living in poverty on the other side, she incurs the wrath of Mother Gothel and gets locked away in a small room at the top of a very tall tree.
When her hair begins to grow excessively long, Rapunzel formulates a plan. With a clever guile, she learns how to use her hair like a rope, rappelling out of the tree and into the wild forest around her. And here's where the adventure truly begins (as Rapunzel herself puts it in her narration, "This is where the `once upon a time' part ends."). And what an adventure it is. When Rapunzel meets up with a young scallywag named Jack, things really pick up. Both are on the run: Jack is a horse thief, and Gothel has put a price on Rapunzel's head. To make things worse, Gothel has locked up Rapunzel's birth mother, and Rapunzel is bound and determined to get back to the castle to rescue her mother and overthrow Gothel for good.
Luckily for readers, RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE is as clever as it is good-humored. The plot never rests for too long, keeping our two intrepid heroes constantly moving and always in some spot of trouble that takes all their wits to escape. Mining the depths of fairy tales provides a wealth of material, and giving this one a modern-day twist adds layers of personality to the mix. Believe it or not, this Rapunzel is so much more interesting to read about than what the Brothers Grimm offered.
--- Reviewed by John Hogan
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Western Fairy Tale, September 18, 2008
This is a graphic novel in the truest sense of the word, a done-in-one novel length comic book. It's intended for, and marketed to, the middle reader set (ages 9 to 12), but it's just as suitable for young adults and adults alike.
Rapunzel's Revenge takes place in a fairy-tale-version of the American west, in which standard fairy tale tropes are recast in western idioms. The main character is Rapunzel, a young girl raised in a well-guarded villa by a woman she thinks is her mother. When Rapunzel learns that the woman is in fact an evil sorceress who rules the land with an iron fist, she tries to escape, only to end up imprisoned in a high tower, her hair cursed to grow endlessly. But rather than waiting for any handsome prince to come along and rescue her, Rapunzel simply braids her hair into two long rope-like braids, frees herself, and then using her braids as lariats and whips sets out to end the sorceress's rule once and for all. She meets up with a young ne'er-do-well named Jack, who is down on his luck until his pet goose finally lays an egg, and together they travel across the deserts and forests, having adventures. Highly recommended.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hale/Hale the gang's all here, August 10, 2008
A popular novelist may be prone to looking at the whole of their oeuvre. They consider their past works, look to the future, and decide to write a graphic novel. What makes them do this? Is it the potential to reach whole new audiences? Is it the accessibility of the format? The trendiness of it all? Or it is something else? Could it be that graphic novels are the wave of the future? Could be. Certainly they offer an author a whole new way of looking at the literary format. Why an enterprising young man or woman - and man, could perhaps even take a fairy tale and do wondrous things with it. You could even, and maybe I'm just talking crazy stuff here, take the fairy tale of Rapunzel, slap it into a pseudo-cowboy/wizardry setting. Add in Newbery-Honor winner Shannon Hale, her husband, and a guy with the same last name who doesn't happen to be related to either of them, and you have a rip-roaring tale of betrayal, escape, romance, and very long locks. Hypothetically, of course.
First things first. You are all familiar with the story of Rapunzel I assume, yes? Witch takes neighbor's baby after the husband steals some of the rapunzel plant for his wife to eat. Witch keeps kid up a tower until the child's hair grows long and she is eventually rescued by a prince. It's all pretty basic stuff. Well that's sort of the true story, but not exactly. For most of Rapunzel's life she's actually kept in a lovely castle with the woman she thinks is her mother, learning rope tricks from the guards and generally having a good time. One day the girl grows inordinately curious about the tall wall that surrounds her home and so she scales it. Consequently, what she sees from the top causes her to question everything about her life. As punishment for this act of rebelliousness Rapunzel is kept in the hollow of a tall tree where her hair grows at an inordinate rate. Each year her "mother" asks if she's ready to be forgiven and each year Rapunzel stays the same. When she finally breaks out of her treetop prison she joins forces with a boy named Jack and the two of them set out to break the power of her "mother" and save the hardscrabble land around them.
Rapunzel is one of those fairy tale characters that remain both iconic and relatively unblemished. Disney never did a thing with Rapunzel, after all. When you think of her, you mind may refer to Paul O. Zelinsky's Caldecott winning picture book or other images of her in literature. From a personal viewpoint, my first reference tends to be the Rapunzel character in Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods. But where Sondheim played up the mother/daughter aspects of the relationship, Hale n' Hale are not particularly interested in that take on the story. Here Mother Gothel, as she is known, is a pretty unrepentantly evil character. She bears little affection for the girl she has raised, which I think is a bit of a loss. It would have been nice to see a more complex villain. Someone who can care and love a little girl on the one hand as a mother, and then turn around and crush the spirit of a nation on the other.
That said, the Hales have a good sense of character and personality here. Rapunzel's spirit is pretty evident, both visually and through her verve and words right from the get go. Heck, the first time you see her she's hanging off a branch in the garden and falling into a small pond. The Hales avoid the usual tomboy-told-to-act-like-a-pretty-princess storyline that's been so done and overdone before. Here Rapunzel is brave and curious right from the start, but with a way of communicating that is entirely her own. After all, when she first sees the devastation that surrounds her home of the past nine years her response is "Well I'll be swigger-jiggered and hung out to dry."
The cowboy feel and characters in this book are a bit odd, but they work within the context of the tale. It's certainly a more American take on the Rapunzel story than you'll usually find in a library. All spurs and lassos and riding bucks. Short of Indian attacks (of which there are blessedly none) all the usual tropes are there.
Nathan Hale was an interesting choice of illustrator for this particular outing. It took me a while to get attuned to his more cartoonish style, I admit. I had seen the work he'd done on his picture books Yellowbelly and Plum Go to School, which employed a mighty realistic take on your average everyday six-year-old monsters. For this book, Hale scales back the complexity (at least until he needs to use it) producing a simpler product. Once you get into it, it kinda works. I liked Hale's ability to render the multiple uses of extremely long hair during the Rapunzel-grows-up montages. I liked that he was as comfortable presenting a grey desolate wasteland as we was a beautiful ball gown. If I'm not too much mistaken there seemed to be a visual Pippi Longstocking reference going on for much of the book (hey man, I always said she was the original female superhero). And I liked that he ends the book (spoiler alert, for those of you who care) with a very sexy kiss. Very sexy. Or maybe I just like boys in white shirtsleeves.
It's a hard novel to place, in a way. There really aren't that many younger reader graphic novels outside of the manga sphere to compare this to. I can't help but think that it's going to have to be a hit, though. A Newbery Honor winning author taking familiar fairy tale tropes and then wrapping the whole kerschmozzle in a kick-butt girl package? It's going to have its fans. My only difficulty as a librarian is in figuring out what to recommend to my patrons when they finish the book and want more of the same. Suggestions on that topic are more than welcome. A fun new book worth taking a gander at.
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