#193 of 1001 · February 9, 2021

There’s an impenetrable enigma at the heart of Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Charles Mikolaycak’s The Changing Maze. A young shepherd boy named Hugh listens to his grandmother’s oft-told tale of the wizard-king of the Ragged Lands, of his bewitched greenthorn maze, of its sinister, ever-shifting pathways, of the many travelers who entered in search of royal gold and found themselves subtly transformed from within. When his beloved black lamb wanders off, Hugh follows it and discovers that it has stumbled into the maze from his grandmother’s story. But can he rescue his lamb and emerge unscathed? And just what sort of treasure lies within the treacherous hedge? Mikolaycak’s moody pencil and watercolor illustrations capture expression, body language, and a wealth of intriguing environmental detail. Snyder shows masterful command of language throughout the book. The very title contains a double meaning: “changing” can be parsed as intransitive (“the maze is changing”) or transitive (“the maze is changing those who walk within”). Moreover, spotting the hidden pairs of rhyming words on every page reveals a prose-poem structure as ornate and protean as the labyrinth itself. #maze #labyrinth #lamb #wizard #king #hedge #gold #magic #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks