Walt Disney's Cinderella

retold by Cynthia Rylant
pictures by Mary Blair
Disney Press 2007

No, wrong. This is not acceptable.

Mary Blair worked for the Disney studios from the 1940 through the 1960's and she is responsible for the production art, the "look" if you will, of several key Disney projects including Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland, the "It's a Small World" attraction, Peter Pan and, Walt Disney's Cinderella. She was not a story artist per se though she did make contributions to the projects she worked on. Her primary function was to set the tone and mood for the animators to capture once the art had Uncle Walt's approval.

Outside of her work with the studio Blair made notable achievements in both children's books (I Can Fly) and advertising. I have a very strong visceral reaction to her work, something that comes from having been raised with it, long before I ever knew her name. Her work is an intrinsic part of the mid-century modern artists which include M. Sasek, Aurelius Battaglia, Art Seiden, The Provensens and so on.

I'm going to get all geeky here for a moment and I'll explain afterward. First up is what's called concept art that Mary Blair painted for Cinderella to give the animators a feel for what they were doing.


















And how the animators worked toward that concept.



















The work wasn't meant to be public, it wasn't as finished, though it isn't without merit. Sometimes these images were intended to depict specific scenes, sometimes they were flights of fancy that would later find their way incorporated into a film. On the one hand it is very beautiful work to look at, and shows just how stunning the film could have looked with a bolder approach. While there isn't anything necessarily wrong about her concept work it was never the way any of her finished work was presented publicly. And to my eye it doesn't track well for younger readers, a little too loose, a little abstract.

You know who is drooling over this? Animation aficionados (aka cartoon nerds) who as kids themselves probably would have been bored stiff by this.

So here we are, the good folks at Disney have exhumed the archives once again to make money off the work of artists who won't see a dime. Mix one part growing nostalgia market of adults who remember the Disney film as a kid, one part growing consciousness in the picture book world of the work of Mary Blair, add a dash of capitalizing on the princess market, pinch a recognized name in children's early readers and voila! instant money machine!

As much as I would have salivated over the chance to see (and own) more Mary Blair work the simple fact is that many of these illustrations just don't cut the mustard. The book attempts to tell the movie version of the story and feels entirely too long; it's as if they approached Rylant with the illustrations they wanted to use and said "Pace the story to match these pictures." I'm just not feeling text these days for some reason.

64 pages? It feels like 264. No, this book should be ignored on all fronts. Unfortunately according to Publisher's Weekly it looks like this is the first of three Mary Blair-related cash-ins: Jon Scieszka has already been tapped to surround concept art for Alice in Wonderland with an undecided author to attack Peter Pan down the road. If Disney Press had half a brain in these matters they'd have Scieszka doing Peter Pan.











For all these transgressions, and no doubt more to come, Disney Press should be spanked.

Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal

A Worldwide Cinderella
by Paul Fleishman
illustrated by Julie Paschkis
Holt 2007

Here we have the familiar (if sanitized) fairy tale told with portions of the text excerpted from the telling of 17 different nations. For each sentence -- and sometimes fragments of detail -- text is surrounded by monochrome decorative borders indicating the origin of the text while each spread holds a larger full-color image depicting common aspects of the story.

It's nice to see that many nations have variations of the story with details rich enough to differentiate them, and I like the concept of the book as a whole. I especially like the way Paschkis has filled in the border areas with cultural details, almost as if they are panels in a stained glass window or a an illuminated manuscript. I almost wish the text blocks had some color to them so they blended better with the art.

It's the illustrations that make this book for me because, for all its variety, the text leaves me flat. The fact is, there are many multi-cultural retellings of the Cinderella story as the variations have their own histories and pedigrees. So then why cherry-pick details from many rich versions to make one dull, simplified one? I don't know that we needed another Cinderella story, and without knowing source material I'm left wondering how many of the variations were originally brought to new lands by immigrants and conquerors (the Appalachian variants from German ancestors, Indian variants from the British) or were radically different to begin with and pre-dated outside influences. The concept of an actual worldwide story plays out more like a cultural game of telephone. The more I think about it the more it feels like a multi-culti feel-good tale aimed at pleasing all and offending none. That's my opinion.

Really, I still like it, but more for the pictures.

Grimmoire 21: Cinderella

Most decidedly not the Disney version.

No fairy godmother.
No pumpkins, no coaches, no mice.
The ball was a three-night gala.
No clock chiming at midnight.

The glass slipper was made of gold.
Cinderella's step-sisters each cut off parts of their feet in order to fit the slipper.

All these things that just get left behind in all the retellings, all this wonderful and weird and rich detail!

I cannot tell you how many times a week I see girls go straight to the princess books, many of them are under the age of five, all of them able to name the Disney princesses on sight. I think there ought to be a law that says you cannot buy young girls any books about princesses until after you've read the source material to them. Aloud. Fully explained.

Yes, tell them that when her rich father went on a trip that his stepdaughters requested he bring them back pearls and dresses but that Cinderella requested only a twig from a far-away tree that she would plant on her dead mother's grave where it will grow into a tree (explain how roots work, dearies) and how the tree grew and housed a bird that granted her wishes and prayers.

Read these small girls the story and point out that her father is rich -- she didn't need to dress in rags -- and that her self-sacrifices and obedience to her stepmother and stepsisters are what gave her strength of character. Remind them of these traits when these little princesses throw tantrums because their mothers will only buy them one or two princess books and not all of them. Point out that Cinderella only became a princess after a lengthy indentured servitude with a cruel stepmother who would make her pick out lentils thrown into the ashes of the fireplace. Maybe suggest that if these little princesses would like some more princess books they could volunteer to pick out a bowl of lentils themselves so that they know what it means to become a princess.

And here's a nice detail: In order to prevent Cinderella from running away after the third night of the gala festivities he has his servants coat the stairs with tar. This is how she loses her gold (not glass) slipper. Be sure to pause thoughtfully when relating the part about the stepsisters chopping off parts of their feet to fit the slipper they know isn't theirs. And for their wickedness and malice these stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by pigeons before and after the wedding ceremony.

Underscoring the ghastly behavior of the stepsisters equal to the story of Cinderella herself. Cinderella cannot be who she is (or becomes) without the adversity presented to her, and it is her reward, her cosmic justice if you will, that she not only gets the prince but that her sisters are deformed and mutilated for their actions without her wishing it upon them. These are not small lessons and if all a girl knows is that Cinder's stepsisters were ugly brats then there is little to learn from the tale other than "in the end she gets to wear pretty clothes all the time and dance" as one little girl I heard summarized it.

Yeah, that's what that story is all about.