cover image Cinderella

Cinderella

, . . Scholastic, $15.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-439-56145-7

McClintock (Goldilocks and the Three Bears ) salutes the visual styles of Caldecott and Greenaway in her delectable picture books. This Cinderella, based on Perrault's version, takes place in a sumptuous, Versailles-inspired palace where the heroine sleeps "on a thin mattress in the dingy attic" above her stepsisters' brocaded shell-pink boudoir. After the stepsisters depart for the royal ball, Cinderella's fairy godmother appears, draped in seafoam-green ruffles and lighting the dusk-blue evening with a radiant glass orb on a slender stick. Two nights in a row, the godmother conjures a rococo golden carriage, and Cinderella gets not one but two outfits, first a ballooning pink gown with a floral headdress, and then a champagne-gold and lavender number that will floor young fashionistas. McClintock's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations emulate old-fashioned wood engravings, and the traditional story seems suffused with magic. Yet she adds contemporary touches too, in her balance of fast-moving comics sequences and closely observed moments. Cinderella and the smitten prince "danced all night, chatting with the ease of old, close friends," and at the end, the former chambermaid introduces each of her stepsisters to "a suitable nobleman... They were all terribly sorry about how they had treated her, and everyone lived happily ever after, forever and a day." A splendid (and kind-spirited) retelling of a well-known tale. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)