The Fisherman and His Wife

Grade 1-6 This richly human fable about the ultra-greedy wife and nebbish husband begs for a presentation that makes larger than life these extremes of behavior. However, Stewig's text sounds like a Hardy novel: it explains too much. The wife ``daily regretted he was so ill-equipped to provide for her wants,'' and she minded the house ``regretting she had married a man so easily satisfied with his lot.'' It's a rather full and somewhat formal telling: what couple uses verse to talk to each other? To a magic fish, yes! Stewig does such a full job that there seems little for Tomes' gentle, chromatically subdued illustrations to do. They seem more appropriate for a Dickens book in their attention to details of clothing and mood-setting landscapes than for this morality tale. They lack a sense of visual crescendo that builds in the text each time the greedy fisherwoman ups the ante. By contrast, check out Randall Jarrell's version (Farrar, 1980), illustrated by Margot Zemach. The telling is more idiomatic and the pictures indeed escalate the passion in the scenes of darkening seas as well as in the upscaling of living quarters. The words in this picture book need Zemach's visualization to enhance the emotional content in ways that Stewig's text doesn't need Tomes' finely wrought illustrations. Read together, they offer a wonderful contrast in styles. Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State University, Columbus
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.