#204 of 1001 · February 20, 2021

Here is a fairy tale replete with grandeur and delight: Claire Martin and Gennady Spirin’s Boots and the Glass Mountain. Heedless of his older brothers’ taunts, a young man tames three magical horses, dons three fine suits of armor, and rides three times up a perilously smooth slope of glass to win a princess’s hand in marriage. Martin renders the plot in engaging, straightforward prose, while Spirin’s characteristically resplendent paintings lend the proceedings an air of old-world grandeur. A note for folklore enthusiasts: this book was adapted from “The Maiden on the Glass Mountain”, a tale in Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe’s Norske Folkeeventyr. The plot remains quite faithful to the original story, with the notable addition of a pack of trolls to serve as antagonists. In the Norwegian text, the hero is named “Askeladd” or “Askeladden” (literally “Ash Lad”), a male counterpart to Cinderella who appears throughout Norse folklore. The widespread English-language rendering of “Askeladd” as “Boots” (used here by Martin) was coined by nineteenth-century writer George Webbe Dasent, the original translator of Norske Folkeeventyr, who chose the name to evoke the English tradition of the youngest family member performing menial household chores. #glass #mountain #horse #horses #princess #armor #norway #norwegian #norse #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks