Enchanting. ?áI've never seen anything quite like this except a few meta-fictional books for the very young tots - but this is for young independent readers. ?áMoving, would please critics and *L*iterary types. ?áThe deep theme reminds me somewhat of Where the Wild Things Are, but this is a book I would have read over and over again as a girl, well after I'd outgrown Max's story.

Mild spoiler - open if you like: An imaginative little girl's thoughts tell us a one story about a beautiful and brave princess, while the pictures reveal a more complex and interesting story. ?áNote the first line of the description - that is also the first line of the book. ?áNote that the beautiful things that are imagined are what a daughter of the hills would know.

Serious spoiler - if you're going to read the book, don't open (if you can't get ahold of it, go ahead):The giants are the adults, and they do have even more control over her life, and are thus even more frightening, than the dragon who is a bull. ( )

Zilpha Keatley Snyder - three-time recipient of a Newbery Honor, for The Egypt Game (1967), The Headless Cupid (1971) and The Witches of Worm (1972) - is an author who is predominantly known for her children's novels. She has, however, occasionally dabbled in other genres, and The Princess and the Giants, published in 1973, is the first of her three picture books.

A clever juxtaposition of the fantastic and the mundane, it pairs a fairly conventional and straightforward fairy-tale about a princess who is persecuted by giants, with dual-narrative illustrations that depict both the princess, and a young farm girl whose imagination colors her interactions with her parents. The young princess who is kidnapped by giants and forced to toil away is revealed as the young child who is forced by her parents to do the dishes. When the princess/girl runs away however, one of the "giants" turns out to be the "king" who rescues her.

Although I wouldn't classify this as a must-read picture-book, and wasn't terribly thrilled by Beatrice Darwin's illustrations themselves, I did appreciate the interplay between text and image. Long-time Snyder fans will find it very interesting, I think, and see, in its tale of a child who uses fairytale archetypes (ala Bruno Bettelheim) to explain and understand her circumstances, one more example of the author's preoccupation with the power of the imagination. ( )