Spirin brings his lush, luminous art to the Russian master's strange tale of a lost dog. Rescued by a stranger, Kashtanka is brought to a new home, which she shares with a goose, white cat and pig-all performers in a circus. The dog, too, begins to learn tricks and games, but the novelty of her new life is tempered by her nostalgia for her first home, with a cabinetmaker's family. When the cabinetmaker and his son attend the circus on the night of Kashtanka's debut, the dog must choose her destiny. Trading the saturated spreads and highly wrought borders of his recent works (The Nose; The Children of Lir) for full-page watercolors faced by vignettes and asymmetrical silhouettes, Spirin breathes movement into the pages. Perspectives shift rapidly, subtly conveying Kashtanka the dog's disorientation. Without cashing in on the buffoonery that hovers just beneath the surface of the text, Spirin captures the camaraderie among the animal friends. Kashtanka's new life is presented as an almost surreally solemn carnival whereas her old life, wrapped in misty snow and woodshavings, has the ethereal quality of a dream. Ages 8-up. (Sept.)
Kashtanka, a shaggy-dog story penned by Anton Chekhov in seven parts and first published in 1887, relates the experiences of its eponymous heroine, a fox-faced, reddish dachshund-mix, whose name means 'little chestnut.' After her detestation of music causes her to become separated from the carpenter with whose family she had been living, Kashtanka finds herself taken up by an unusual vaudevillian and goes to live among an assortment of other intelligent animals, each of whom is observed with the characteristic empathy and humor that stamp Chekhov's work. (Summary by Grant Hurlock)
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Kashtanka
Kashtanka, a shaggy-dog story penned by Anton Chekhov in seven parts and first published in 1887, relates the experiences of its eponymous heroine, a fox-faced, reddish dachshund-mix, whose name means 'little chestnut.' After her detestation of music causes her to become separated from the carpenter with whose family she had been living, Kashtanka finds herself taken up by an unusual vaudevillian and goes to live among an assortment of other intelligent animals, each of whom is observed with the characteristic empathy and humor that stamp Chekhov's work. (Summary by Grant Hurlock)
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