Fairy Tale Failure

I grew up watching the television show Reading Rainbow every afternoon. One of my favourite books from the show was Paul O. Zelinsky's Rumpelstiltskin.

As I reread it today, I looked at the language used to tell the story, but mostly I looked at the relationship between the text and the illustrations. My own book unfortunately will not have amazingly rich and elegant oil paintings like Zelinsky's. I think I can only wish for a Caldecott Honor; I'm just an amature artist. But I still can learn a lot from what he puts on the page. My favourite is a two page spread towards the beginning of the book. It is all one large painting over the two pages, one moment in the story. And yet the text on either page are their own different moments. On the first page is describes the miller's daughter's situation and despair, and the part of the painting above it her in the room crying. The second page has Rumpelstiltskin's first entrance and introduction to the girl. The part of the painting above is of the little man coming in the room and bowing. He captured the scene in art transitioning between the two scenes in the text. The simplicity of using that transistion to capture two moments in one scene is brilliant!

For the most part, there is not much other than what is in the text in the paintings. They have wonderful detail, but are also simple. There aren't any extra little plots hidden in the art. But what is depicted complements the text. You can understand the story just by looking at the pictures, but the text gets the story across on its own as well. It is a balance of the two.