The Seven Ravens

A little girl walks to the end of the world to find her seven brothers and free them from enchantment

Grade 2-6-A newly translated and illustrated version of the tale of seven brothers transformed into ravens and rescued years later by their sister. Like most Grimm tales, this one lives up to its creators' name. The sun, whom the girl meets on her journey, is "hot and terrible" and eats children, while the equally nasty moon declares "I smell the flesh of a human child." Sauvant's illustrations suit the strange tale well. The unsavory characters are saved from outright scariness by the artist's sometimes humorously bizarre depictions. The moon is an odd fellow with an enormous yellow ball affixed, hatlike, to his head, while the sun glares majestically from behind a frowning mask and leans carelessly on a cloud. Only the kindhearted stars (attired in floppy slippers and dressing robes) help the girl by giving her a bone key to free her brothers. In a gruesome twist, she loses it and cuts off one of her little fingers to replace it. The picture of the ravens changing back into boys is nicely executed. With Bell's well-done translation and Sauvant's unusual illustrations, this should be a popular addition to fairy-tale col-
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In one of the Grimms' more unsettling tales, a father's idle curse turns seven brothers into ravens, and their young sister, feeling responsible, sets out to find them. En route, she confronts a hostile sun (which "ate little children") and an equally savage moon; finally, she must sever her own finger and use it as a key for unlocking the door to a glass mountain where she meets her brothers. Sauvant's oil paintings, however resplendent, play up the story's bizarreness rather than help readers make sense of its peculiarities. Her work can be nightmarishly surreal, as in the transformation of the brothers from ravens into boys, or her evil-looking sun-her treatment may be artistically coherent with the text, but it does not serve the target audience. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 5^-9. Intense, scary, and beautiful, this picture-book version of a famous Grimms' fairy tale was first published in Switzerland. The telling is spare and direct; the oil paintings show a contemporary child in a world of nightmare horror. A little girl discovers that she was to blame for her brothers' misfortune. She sets off on a quest to free them from the spell that transformed them into ravens. She meets the sun, but he looks like a monster out of Star Trek ("he was hot and terrible and ate little children" ). The moon is cold and cruel and wicked. The kindly stars show her the way, but it's the girl herself who is brave and resourceful. She cuts off one of her fingers and uses it as a key to unlock her brothers' prison. Her sacrifice breaks the spell and transforms them back to boys again. In the final picture we also see that her finger is restored. Like recent versions of Andersen's The Snow Queen, this is a story in which the girl is not the sleeping beauty--she's the hero on a quest to set the boys free. Hazel Rochman