Madame Lagrande and Her So High, to the Sky, Uproarious Pompadour
A fashion victim in pre-Revolutionary France, Madame LaGrande causes an uproar in Paris with her behemoth of a hairstyle. When an enterprising hairdresser decorates Madame's dizzyingly tall pompadour with bunches of grapes, the grapes attract pigeons, which in turn attract cats, and so on. Arriving at the opera, our heroine, delighted with the attention she is garnering while ignorant of its real cause, parades by the royal box and her pompadour cum menagerie literally sweeps the affronted king off his feet. While the text is longwinded and leaden in places, Schindler's (The Ghost of Nicholas Greebe, reviewed below) drawings, reminiscent of 18th-century editorial cartoons, establish the perfect mock-serious tone for the tale and launch it into heights of comic absurdity. His stellar efforts grant Madame LaGrande her comic dignity, even as birds, cats, dogs and king cling precariously to her towering tresses. Ages 3-8.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.