Chronicle Books: San Francisco, 2004

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Title: Thumbelina. Pulgarcita

Language: English-Spanish bilingual book

Translation by (if any): not credited

Adaptation by (if any): Caterina Valrui (she is the author of the adaptation in Spanish; it is not clear who wrote the English text)

Illustrated by: Max

Andersen credited as the author on the front cover: no

Place of issue: San Francisco, CA

Publishing house: Chronicle Books

Year of issue: 2004

Notes: originally published in Catalan in 1998, also with Max’s illustrations

Annotation: A budget paperback with a quite good retelling is graced by Max’s illustrations – stylish, energetic and full of heart. Thanks to their bright and limited array of colours, they don’t suffer too much from the only more than mediocre printing quality.

Weirdly, I have two Thumbelinas from the San Francisco publishing house Chronicle Books, and neither of them credits Andersen as the author on the front cover. The credit is given on the copyrights page, sure, but let’s be honest: who ever reads the copyrights page? I have no idea why the publisher made such a decision, which I find quite unfair. Not even to Andersen, who probably doesn’t care now that he is dead, but to the children who won’t be aware on one really good Danish author. Welcome to the strange world of picture books.

Speaking of the pictures, in this fortunate case they redeem everything bad about this edition. The artist is Francesco Capdevila, better known under his pen name Max. Most famous for his comic books, Max has also created a lot of illustrations that in 1997 won him the Spanish National Award for Children Books. Max’s artistic style is immediately recognizable with its contrasting colours and expressive, minimalistic lines.  You will see if you check the gallery on his website that this style is in fact very flexible and allows for very interesting stylization, such as the pseudo-Chinese feel in The Nightingale (El ruiseñor in Spanish, check gallery > children’s).

I am particularly fond of Max’s art because energy is what Thumbelina illustrations usually lack. In fact, most of them are quite static and prefer decorative detail over raw emotion. Andersen’s language, however, is clear and devoid of unnecessary decorations. The story itself is also action-driven. Something is happening all the time, Thumbelina constantly finds herself at new places, and if Andersen creates an idyllic pause at some point, it means he has planned to ruin this idyll by the end of the paragraph. He slows the narrative just enough for us to catch breath.

I don’t usually like to reduce the matter to this argument, but in this case I am quite sure gender stereotypes are the problem. Thumbelina, especially an adapted one, is usually conceived as a book for girls. A book for girls is more likely to end up on the cute decorative side than any other picture book. The material allows for this view if not read too attentively. After all, Thumbelina has more flowers and butterflies in it than gutters, rats and scary Jack-in-the-boxes . 

But Max is a different story. His Thumbelina is funny and dramatic at the same time, which suits the story really well. He has, for example, one of the most exciting depictions of the witch I’ve ever seen, complete with the cartoonish Spanish-Gypsy imagery:

There is quite a power in this simplicity. The witch scene is something I always focus on, so you will see how watered down this character usually is, typically turned into a kind old granny or, at worst, into a fairy. But this flower birth is some crazy stuff if you think about it.

The toad is also very nice. Unlike the witch, she actually tends to get some of the greatest illustrations: the idea of a crazy toad mum kidnapping a wife for her stupid boy is too funny to get it wrong. Even in the quite bad Russian cartoon the toads are great fun. What struck me about Max’s approach here is that he decided to depict the toad as an actual toad (rather than a bossy fat housewife in a bonnet who also happens to be a toad). The exaggerated step, dramatic perspective and limited colours make the impression that something rushed, really fast-moving is happening. Which is absolutely true. Although the English-Spanish retelling does not keep the structure of the original’s dashing sequence, where the fleeting idyllic scenes break into catastrophic events all the time, the illustrations can partly compensate for this.

To compare: here is Lauren Mills with her very typical lady toad:

The most important thing is that this Thumbelina has a Thumbelina you will actually remember. Max is not afraid to make her funny and down-to-earth rather than beautiful – something that has also worked great in Quentin Gréban’s illustrations. For a children’s retelling, this approach is just perfect, since Andersen’s somewhat decadent beauty is not there anyway.  This guy works with simple lines really well, just have a look at the characters’ contrasting emotions here.

I laughed a lot at this illustration with the spiders, because they look somewhat similar to the drow, dark elves from Robert Salvatore’s fantasy novels, who worship spiders. Dark skin, white hair, girls rather than boys – you know what I mean!

I have no idea whether Max meant this reference or not, but I liked it that the spiders have some personality in this book. Andersen writes so that every detail grabs your attention, including those spiders working on Thumbelina’s trousseau, but in most illustrations they aren’t even there. And if they are, they are usually, you know, just spiders. On the other hand, it is far from clear in Max that what we see is a wedding preparation. Some artists tend to depict a lot of stuff when they illustrate this scene: clothes, carpets, all kinds of things that will constitute the dowry, usually with a very unhappy Thumbelina in the middle. Max’s depiction, however, is much simpler than that. It just implies Thumbelina would like to get away from this dark hole and the weird spiders who are probably priestesses of Lloth the Queen of the Demonweb Pits.  And this simple approach means an important thing: Max looks at the non-social side of Andersen. Which is really refreshing. Many people aren’t able to see past the social level (the mole is rich, the mouse a petit bourgeois, the beetle a Bright Young Thing etc), meanwhile Max just enjoys the story. I think if I was 4-5, I would love this book. At 27, I do.

A few words have to be said about Catarina Valrui’s retelling. It is a very shortened and simplified version of the story, made for early readers, but it is quite good at what it does. Not as good as Sindy McKay’s text with Quentin Gréban‘s illustrations, but much better than most retellings out there. Surprisingly many of Andersen’s little details are preserved (like the spiders, or Thumbelina getting a new name in the end), and it reads well both in Spanish and in English. The book itself is a nice paperback, printed with comparatively few colours, but Max’s art has a limited palette anyway. In all, it is a very nice version of Thumbelina for young children, simplified but not dumbed down. I still think that omitting Andersen’s name is unforgivable,  and not crediting the English translator is also weird, but it is Chronicle Books’s fault. As to Caterina Valriu and Max, they did amazing work. Good to know they are both in that 1998 Spanish edition, too.