The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Hardcover

Begin, Mary Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316736112 ISBN 13: 9780316736114

Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers, 2005

Synopsis

A sorcerer's young apprentice attempts to practice magic in her master's absence, with disastrous results, in a classic tale that teaches that passion and hard work tempered by patience and discipline can help make dreams come true.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Jane Begin is the illustrator for several children's books including A Mouse Told His Mother by Bethany Roberts (L,B 1997), Little Mouse's Painting by Diane Wolkstein, and The Porcupine Mouse by Bonnie Pryor. She has also done advertising and merchandising work for Hasbro, Milton Bradley, See's Candies, Franklin Mint, Celestial Seasonings, Disney, and many other companies. She is also an instructor at Rhode Island School of Design.

Reviews

Grade 2-4–A girl becomes apprentice to a great magician and healer. Growing weary of her menial household tasks, she yearns to get on with learning spells. Predictably, she tries out a spell in secret, creating the central chaos of the story as the broom she orders to fetch water goes out of control. Her terror in the resulting situation will captivate readers. The concluding lesson, stated by her returning master as he sets things to rights, is a bit anticlimactic: Through hard work and practice, you can learn to have the patience to do anything…. And, of course, she understands that many years later when she has become a sorcerer herself. The retelling is competent and smooth, and the attractive acrylic paintings add drama and bits of fun. Single-page illustrations face text pages that are occasionally adorned with smaller vignettes and surrounded with rich blue borders decorated with objects of the sorcerers trade. The girl appears as a young adolescent, while the sorcerer is blonde and blue-eyed; both are beautifully costumed, she in Elizabethan-style dress and he in a fur-trimmed aqua robe and deep blue cape and hat. Begin provides no source notes, but with few renditions of this tale currently in print, her handsome rendering will be welcome in most libraries.–Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston
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PreS-K. There are surprisingly few picture-book retellings of the classic story of the sorcerer's apprentice, perhaps because the imagery from Disney's Fantasia casts such a long shadow. Begin follows the story line closely--complete with anthropomorphic broomsticks, a chaotic flood, and a lesson learned--diverging only in the replacement of Mickey Mouse with a human girl. What Begin's treatment lacks in imagination, it makes up for in lavish atmosphere. Her velvety acrylic paintings are appealingly cluttered with archetypal magician's-workshop details, and her characters, though sometimes oddly rigid in their^B movements and facial expressions, wear ornate, flowing medieval costumes. This can't compete with the swirling sights and sounds of the Disney version, or with the darker, more esoteric imaginings of Nancy Willard's 1993 version, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. But many kids appreciate a picture book that allows them to experience a favorite movie in a new (but still recognizable) way, and the connections between "sorcerers"and "wizards"will not be overlooked by youngsters who have caught the fantasy bug from their elders. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316736112
• ISBN 13: 9780316736114
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32