The Fisherman and His Wife
As she has with previous books, The Princess and the Pea and The Twelve Dancing Princesses (both, 2007), Isadora takes stories from the Brothers Grimm and adapts them for a generically African setting. The fisherman frees a flounder and gets a wish. Then his wife makes him continually up the ante: her new hut must become a castle; then she wants to be king, emperor, pope! The highly patterned collage pictures don’t really capture the scope of her ambitions, which seem more European than African, but their shaped and sculptured beauty is arresting. Preschool-Grade 1. --Ilene Cooper