Pencil-and-watercolor illustrations render grotesque characters, an awkward, simpering Thumbelina, but a reassuringly beautiful swallow in this retelling of the classic tale. From HORN BOOK 1990, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

PreS - Gr 3-- Another polished presentation in the series, this recording features actress Kelly McGillis reading the classic tale. She employs a variety of voices and accents throughout and, in a nice touch, uses her natural voice for the voice of Thumbelina. The accompanying acoustic music by Mark Isham features reeds and flutes that effectively evoke the rural settings of the story. The tape narration is marred only by several awkward silences during which there seems an unnatural break and there is no music. The accompanying book features a text that is true to the essentials of Andersen's story but that differs in a number of details and incidents from Haugaard's distinguished translation in Complete Fairy Tales and Stories (Doubleday, 1974; o.p.). Johnson's accompanying watercolors are strikingly similar to those by Lisbeth Zwerger, who has illustrated her own version of Thumbeline (Picture Book Studio, 1985) in a slightly darker palette. For general purchase by libraries who are building book/tape collections or who want to increase their Andersen holdings. --Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this spare and lilting unabridged translation of the classic tale, the tiny girl's pleasant life is interrupted when she is stolen in sleep by an ugly matron-toad who seeks a wife for her son. A series of misadventures with goliath-like creatures‘whether a cruel may-bug or a compassionate field mouse‘leaves the beautiful Thumbelina feeling like a misfit. But her kindness in saving a swallow's life is returned when the bird flies her south to its enchanted garden. Here, Thumbelina finally meets her prince and discovers she is home. Graston, in a stunning debut, uses a light-shifting background of subtly tinted tiles as a backdrop to the range of miniature delights (a walnut-shell bed with rose-petal linens, a butterfly-powered sail on a lily pad) and darker emotions (loneliness and feeling out of place). The artwork varies from the silken and jewel-like (flowers and butterfly wings) to the earthy and somber (the cultured mole's underground home, the ailing swallow's feathered chest). The finale grounds the heady sentiment of the fairy-tale ending: the swallow perches on the venerable storyteller's fingers as it relates the tale to Andersen. All ages. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Ages 6^-8. Using as text the unabridged translation by the esteemed Haugaard, this picture book has a longer text than most, but a series of captivating illustrations by Graston will help keep interest focused on the story. Tiny Thumbelina is treasured by her human mother but is stolen away by an ugly toad. Promised in marriage to the toad's son, the girl escapes downstream, where she is first abducted by a May bug and then abandoned by him, rescued by a mouse, and promised in marriage to a mole. Finally, a swallow she has restored to life takes Thumbelina to a distant land, where she meets and marries a tiny fellow as handsome as herself, a king among diminutive angels who gives Thumbelina wings as well as his crown. Varying in size from double-page spreads to small panels, Graston's paintings have a haunting beauty as full of sadness and longing as the tale itself. The pictures, with a palette rich in dusky blues and tawny golds, make this impossible fantasy believable and its heroine sympathetic to the end. --Carolyn Phelan

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S 1836 "Thumbelina" is the story of a tiny, passive girl, no bigger than your thumb. She is good at cleaning and music. She has a kind heart. She is exceptionally good-looking and modest. "She had no way of knowing how lovely she was," as Sylvia Long puts it in her retelling. Everyone loves Thumbelina. In fact, they love her so much they want to either abduct her, marry her or rescue her. There seems to be nothing else to do with Thumbelina, actually. Here's the story: Magically born from a flower, tiny Thumbelina is soon kidnapped by horrid toads for purposes of marriage. She's rescued by fish and a butterfly, abducted by an amorous beetle, abandoned, adopted by a mouse, forced to marry a mole and rescued by a swallow just before the wedding. Then she marries royalty and lives happily ever after. The tale may be inherently irritating to parents hoping to present their children with models of girls and women not so mired in the values of Andersen's 19th century. These two new editions, though lovely, compound this problem by portraying Thumbelina as a blue-eyed white girl possessing the even features and slim build that have been representing ideal beauty to Westerners for more than a century. It's a bit depressing, actually, that neither book pushes to reimagine the story visually. Yes, it's nice to have pretty new pictures of a famous tale, but beyond that, why this story? What interpretation are the artists offering? Why revisit "Thumbelina" now? There are no answers in these two books. They are conventional as can be - staid, even - though that's not to say that they're without value. Both are exceedingly attractive, and the story is a wild adventure filled with eccentric animal characters. My 8-year-old, who usually considers herself rather old for picture books, grabbed them off my desk and read them cover to cover one after the other. Thumbelinas drawn by Sylvia Long, above, and Bagram Ibatoulline, below. Long is best known for illustrating the spectacularly beautiful picture book "An Egg Is Quiet" by Dianna Aston. Her watercolors bring out the wonder of the natural world with an almost emotional intensity. Several spreads in her "Thumbelina" are vertical, requiring children to turn them to get a proper look, emphasizing that the book is as much a beautiful object as a story to get lost in. THE old mama toad in Long's book seems anatomically correct down to the flecks in the irises, making her all the more horrifying. The beetles, though dressed in pearls and filmy gowns, have detailed wings and antennas. The water, the flowers, the gently cloudy sky, the snowcapped mountains beneath the swallow as it flies - all these are so gorgeously and specifically rendered that the centerpiece of the story almost seems to be the landscape as tiny Thumbelina sees it. Long's version is quite faithful to Andersen's original, which is to say wordy and full of details: "She wove herself a bed out of blades of grass and hung it under clover leaves for protection from the rain. She sucked nectar from the flowers for food and drank dew from their leaves every morning." It's well suited to older readers and fairy tale fans. Brian Alderson's "Thumbelina" is more of a departure from the original, though he's known as an Andersen translator ("The Swan's Stories"). His approach is great for reading aloud to small children, since his short sentences and rhythmic language emphasize character. Descriptive passages are axed in favor of dialogue. For example, in Long's book, the mama toad thinks, "What a pretty little wife she would make for my son." Alderson's croaks: "Rek-kek-kek-kek. What a catchi-catchi-catch. She shall wed my Toadikins." Long's field mouse scolds, "Nonsense!" when Thumbelina objects to spending her life underground with the pompous blind mole. Alderson's snaps, "Now don't be obstropolous." Thumbelinas drawn by Sylvia Long, above, and Bagram Ibatoulline, below. Alderson's version is a vigorous interpretation, though it doesn't particularly energize its heroine. Thumbelina herself speaks only a single sentence: "She has been so kind to me," she remarks of bossy Mrs. Fieldmouse. Bagram Ibatoulline's gouache and watercolor paintings give Thumbelina a large-eyed pathos reminiscent of silent movie heroines, but her body and face are so much less detailed than those of his charmingly nefarious antagonists that in some scenes she almost seems a cartoon character adrift in the real world. His pictures are bolder and funnier than Long's, and the brilliant purples and greens of the landscape contrast strongly with the damp grays and browns of the field mouse burrow that traps Thumbelina. One can feel the joyous relief when the swallow rescues her, flying above a bright green meadow, and over all, Alderson and Ibatoulline's recasting tells the story with higher energy and drama. "Thumbelina" has a premise that is inherently enchanting: it's the adventures of a miniature human being. The terrors of giant toads and bugs, the joys of a ride on a swallow or a float on a lily pad - all this will capture children's imaginations in these new editions, just as it has since 1836, whatever one might feel about the limitations of the heroine or the ambitions of the artists. Emily Jenkins's most recent books are "Sugar Would Not Eat It" and "Toy Dance Party."

Though Hautzig abbreviates and simplifies this classic considerably, her style does echo Andersen's wry, sweet, satirical tone. The watercolor illustrations, by a Finnish artist, are outstanding: Thumbelina is a tiny, appealing waif, with the natural world that stages her adventures seen through an affectionate, observant eye. The scenes are set within gentle borders imaginatively borrowed from elements in the illustrations: cobwebs, blossoms, blowing leaves. Lovely art, acceptable text. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.