“This is a story about darkness
and light, about sorrow and joy, about something lost and something found. This
is a story about Love.”
Walt Disney’s Cinderella
retold by Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Mary Blair is truly a masterpiece!
Rylant’s beautiful way with words combined with Blair’s heart-warming
illustrations makes this a truly classic Cinderella story. Blair was the
original artist for Walt Disney’s Cinderella movie. How could we go
wrong with this incredible pair?! It is very true to the Disney movie. I have fallen in love with this book and I
plan on buying my own copy to read to my children some day!
Let me begin by saying the current
price for a new version of this book on Amazon.com is $72.84 and I would pay
that price to own a copy of this book myself. That is how perfect this book is!
The story follows the very classic plot of Cinderella but infused with Rylant’s
beautiful, simple words. Her writing in this book is poetic and will tug at your heart’s
strings. I tried to choose a favorite part in the story and failed. So, here is one of my many favorites:
“How does a young man find his
maiden? His heart leads him. He finds her in a room. He asks her to dance. And
when he touches her, he knows.”
I cried! I literally cried when I read this page! How
BEAUTIFUL! Rylant sure knew what she was doing when she decided to retell this
story. Additionally, I really enjoyed the simplicity of the text pages. They
are different pastel colors of purple, pink, green, blue, and yellow and switch
off being on different sides of each page. On the pages where there is not much
text, there is a simple symbol or two. The entire book is full bleed and we are
thrown right in the midst of the story. This is very appropriate for the intricacy
of the illustrations and warm, poetic theme of the text.
Blair's illustrations are magical. They are her own original illustrations that she painted for inspiration for Disney's film. The color scheme is actually surprisingly darker and highlighted with pastels. There are not many bright colors in this book but I think the darkness makes the story seem more dream-like. The end papers are a soft, pastel
pink with a repeated royalty-inspired symbol. There are also what looks like
pockets repeated on the pages. The front matter of the book is extremely
elegant and feminine with shades of pink, blue, green, and white. This is
definitely a princess book! However I do not care for the cover. It seems very anticlimactic
for such an incredible book. The back cover is much more my style and what I
would have liked to see on the front! It matches the style of the title page which turns out is courtesy of Disney themselves.
Every time the word “Love” is in
the book it has a capital L. I believe Rylant did this in order to give love an
entity of its own. Love is such an integral part of life and it was the most
important thing to Cinderella. The word “Love” is repeated many times in the beginning
of the text to emphasize just how central it was to Cinderella’s life. And
honestly, isn't that how fairy tales should be?
Let me get personal for a second. I
grew up watching Disney movies as did many children of the 90’s. We were taught
from these movies that a love like Cinderella’s is real and waiting for each
one of us. I have read the arguments about how Disney sets unrealistic
expectations about love for children and that perhaps that is the reason for
the increase in divorce rate. But is it really so
wrong for children to dream about having a happy ever after love life? Don’t
Disney movies and others like them fill children with hope for their future?
That they someday will grow up and find their prince/princess? If you do not
have passion for life and love, what do you have?
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