The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Illustrated by Kate Greenaway

by Robert Browning, Kate Greenaway (Illustrator)

Overview

Robert Browning’s famous verse retelling of the medieval legend of the Pied Piper is renowned for its humor and vivid wordplay. When the selfish townspeople of Hamelin refuse to pay the piper for spiriting away the hordes of rats that had plagued them, he exacts his revenge by luring away their greatest treasure, the children of the town.

Color reproductions of Kate Greenaway’s beautiful, delicate watercolor illustrations adorn every page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679428121
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/02/1993
Series:	Everyman's Library Children's Classics Series
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	326,267
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.47(d)
Age Range:	6 - 11 Years

About the Author

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was born in Camberwell, London, the son of a clerk in the Bank of England. The strongest influence on his education were the books in his father's extensive library, particularly the writings of Byron and Shelley. His dramatic poem Paracelsus, published in 1835, established his reputation and brought him the friendship of the actor-manager William Macready. When Macready's eldest son Willie was ill in bed, Browning wrote for the boy's entertainment the poem of The Pied Piper, a story he remembered from his own childhood. After its appearance in print in 1842, it became a children's classic, attracting new illustrators in every generation.

In 1846 Robert Browning married a fellow poet, Elizabeth Barrett, eloping with her to Italy where they lived until Elizabeth's death in 1861. He them returned to England to live with his only sister Sarianna, but later he went back to Italy, where he died at the Rezzonico Palace in Venice.

Editorial Reviews

The dramatic events that Browning recorded in 1842 unfold as if they occurred yesterday in Peen's computer-generated illustrations, which show a historical setting but are unmistakably contemporary. Tugging at both the medieval and modern time periods, these scenes have bold, black, shivering lines and flat expanses of colors in subdued hues, overlaid by different color shapes. The details in this city, from the pillaging rats to the gluttonous council members, bring Browning's lesson home, although the details of the narrative, in the stylized art, are more abstract. Combining the Kate Greenaway edition and this one at a story hour would comprise the perfect launch for discussion of illustrators and their choices, and the stylistic differences between children's book art of the last century and this one. (Picture book. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews