Brave Red, Smart Frog: A New Book of Old Tales

by Emily Jenkins, Rohan Daniel Eason (Illustrator)

Overview

Step into a wintry forest where seven iconic fairy tales unfold,retold with keen insight and touches of humor.

There once was a frozen forest so cold you could feel it through the soles of your boots. It was a strange place where some kisses broke enchantments, and others began them. Many said witches lived there — some with cold hearts, others with hot ovens and ugly appetites — and also dwarves in tiny houses made of stones. In this icy wood, a stepmother might eat a girl’s heart to restore her own beauty, while a woodcutter might become stupid with grief at the death of his donkey. Here a princess with too many dresses grows spiteful out of loneliness, while a mistreated girl who is kind to a crone finds pearls dropping from her mouth whenever she speaks. With empathy and ear for emotion, Emily Jenkins retells seven fairy tales in contemporary language that reveals both the pathos and humor of some of our most beloved stories. Charming illustrations by Rohan Daniel Eason add whimsical details that enhance every new reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763691783
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	5 - 9 Years

About the Author

Emily Jenkins is the author of many books for children, including the recent picture books Tiger and Badger, illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay, and Princessland, illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. Her chapter books include the Toys series, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky; she is co-author of the Upside-down Magic series. Emily Jenkins lives in New York City.

Rohan Daniel Eason has illustrated many books for children, including Black Hearts in Battersea and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken as well as My First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs by Matthue Roth. Rohan Daniel Eason lives and works in London.

Emily Jenkins is the author of many books for children. Her picture books include Lemonade in Winter, Toys Meet Snow, The Fun Book of Scary Stuff, Five Creatures, A Fine Dessert, Water in the Park and That New Animal. Her chapter books include the Toys series, which begins with Toys Go Out, and the Upside-down Magic series.

Three things you don’t know (yet) about Emily:
1. She bakes a lot of birthday cakes, even when it is not anyone’s birthday.
2. She has a stripy-spotty cat named Blizzard Alexander.
3. She has a collection of fairy-tale books, many of which are more than one hundred years old

Rohan Daniel Eason is an illustrator who works predominantly in black-and-white pen and ink. He’s been living in London for the last twenty years, working on diverse projects ranging from Volkswagen advertisements to reinterpreting Franz Kafka’s work as children’s books. He began his career working in fashion, designing prints and bespoke tattooed leather, before signing with his agency and broadening his output to encompass all areas of the magical, contemporary, and beguiling worlds of modern media print and publishing.

Editorial Reviews

…Jenkins adds welcome layers of texture to parables we think we know well. She's particularly interested in flawed heroines, like Crystal, the princess in her version of The Frog Prince…Eason's finely detailed illustrations balance the natural world with a fantastical one: A witch's candy cottage looks as realistic and believable as the elaborately etched bark of a tree.

The New York Times Book Review - Stephanie Zacharek

★ 07/03/2017
Fine, spare prose distinguishes these shrewd retellings of seven familiar tales. “Snow White” opens with a shiver: “There was once a frozen forest, cold as cold ever was.” Jenkins (Tiger and Badger) scarcely alters the stories; they end the way they generally do. Instead, she deepens and refines them, giving the characters humanity and individuality. When January, the queen in “Snow White,” looks in the mirror, she “wanted the mirror to show the face she had seen long ago, a face of smooth and shining ice.” Blunt, the only nonfool in a story about three fools, “felt quite lucky, suddenly, to have found a future wife so tenderhearted as Amity, noodle though she was.” The dialogue hums: “Why should I care if a dairy maid feels my skin?” the Frog Prince demands. Sometimes the tales are drawn into eerie relationship with each other (the hunter in “Red Riding Hood” is the same one who fails to kill Snow White). Eason’s drawings, one for each story, conjure an atmosphere of otherworldliness with deep forests and thatched cottages huddled in snow. Ages 8–12. Author’s agent: Elizabeth Kaplan, Elizabeth Kaplan Literary. Illustrator’s agency: Illustration Ltd. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

‘Brave Red, Smart Frog’ is subtitled ‘A New Book of Old Tales,’ and the stories in it include riffs on ‘Snow White’ and ‘Red Riding Hood.’ But Jenkins adds welcome layers of texture to parables we think we know well.
—The New York Times Book Review

Fine, spare prose distinguishes these shrewd retellings of seven familiar tales...Eason’s drawings, one for each story, conjure an atmosphere of otherworldliness with deep forests and thatched cottages huddled in snow.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The traditional dark Teutonic forest that harbors wolves, witches and little girls in red cloaks becomes a sparkling but no less forbidding icy wood in ‘Brave Red, Smart Frog,’ a wise and sophisticated retelling by Emily Jenkins of seven favorite fairy tales…Ms. Jenkins connects her stories with tricks of language that are as quietly clever as they are appealing.
—The Wall Street Journal

Several folktales are linked together by their setting in Jenkins’ retellings...there’s certainly a storytelling cadence to Jenkins’ iterations and they’d make a nice readaloud, especially to youngsters who might want to add their own details.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

This slim, handsome volume includes an illustrated title page for each tale with a simple, nicely sketched setting usually framed in the forest’s twining branches...A welcome visit for fairy-tale fans, and a useful introduction for readers not so familiar with these enduring stories.
—School Library Journal

In an author’s note to this brief, charming collection, Jenkins mentions that her goal is not to reimagine classic fairy tales, but rather tell them in a way that honors the oral tradition of the original stories. In simple, straightforward narratives, she retells seven stories, some of which (“Snow White,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel”) will be familiar to readers, while others (“Three Wishes,” “Toads and Pearls,” “The Three Great Noodles”) will most likely be completely new.
—Booklist

Jenkins does not shield readers from the violence found in traditional tales, but she does present readers with beautifully crafted versions, each enhanced with an introductory pen and ink illustration. This would be a fine addition to collected fairy tales.
—School Library Connection

Emily Jenkins...has written her own versions of seven familiar fairy tales and they are fresh, lovely and wonderful. They are beautifully written and full of humor and wisdom but they are not saccharine.
—Buffalo News

A brilliant, highly entertaining blending of seven classic fairy tales, Brave Red, Smart Frog: A New Book of Old Tales is guaranteed to command many repeat readings of this enchanting book.
—Reading Eagle (from Kendal Rautzhan's "Books to Borrow")

Subtly untraditional, with lovely prose.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

07/01/2017
Gr 3–5—Although wordy at times, Jenkins's skillful narration generally stays faithful to the source material of seven retold tales and provides depth for some characters. However, the author makes some tweaks, and her idea of "happy-ever-after" is a little different than in the original stories. In "The Frog Prince," Crystal doesn't get to throw the frog against the wall, but when the frog turns into a prince, they do fall in love and marry. Cherry—the good sister in "Toads and Pearls"—does not marry the king's son as in the Charles Perrault version. ("She wanted to make a life for herself somewhere new…. She came to a town, rented a room, and paid in pearls.") It's not clear whether Snow White will marry Prince Beacon. But Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and the "Three Great Noodles" end up pretty much as expected. Jenkins explains in a concluding author's note that her intent was to be faithful, though not necessarily accurate, in retelling the tales "to bring out what's most meaningful to me." Her occasional references to bunnies and bluebirds are a bit too cute, but the contemporary tone is effective. This slim, handsome volume includes an illustrated title page for each tale with a simple, nicely sketched setting usually framed in the forest's twining branches. VERDICT A welcome visit for fairy-tale fans, and a useful introduction for readers not so familiar with these enduring stories.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston

School Library Journal

2017-06-14
Folk and fairy tales intersect in tiny ways.Loosely organized in and around a frozen forest where "the streams were iced, the bushes bare" come seven classical tales. There are witches here, "some with cold hearts, and others with hot ovens and ugly appetites"; there is "beauty like an icicle—sharp and slippery." Parents die, and children either turn "bitter as walnuts" or stay "sweet as cherries." Each tale keeps mostly to itself, holding its integrity and recognizability—but they whisper to one another. A "sunny forest populated by bunnies and bluebirds" shows up more than once in contrast to the frozen one; the huntsman who slits open Red Riding Hood's wolf is "returning from a terrible errand," which hauntingly reveals that he's Snow White's huntsman too. Red's wolf inquires whether her grandmother lives "in the sugar house," a reference to "Hansel and Gretel." A dry, repeated lesson about beauty in character whisks past. Jenkins experiments with modern moral complexity by afflicting Red's wolf with painful hunger and self-hatred for how he sates it and by painting the Frog Prince's princess—who never gets to throw her frog against a wall—as problematically girly and spoiled. An old trope of blindness connoting evil remains. Humans are ostensibly white; a tree sprite is brown. Eason's illustrations seem consciously to evoke the work of Trina Schart Hyman. Subtly untraditional, with lovely prose. (author's note) (Fairy tales. 5-10)

Kirkus Reviews