#423 of 1001 · September 27, 2021

Continuing with Sleeping Beauty Week, I’m looking through this appealing version by Margaret Early, whose dramatic text and illustrations (executed in oils on synthetic canvas and augmented with gold paint) create an air of antique refinement. The wicked fairy, with her sharp claws, snaggletooth, warty nose, and lazy eye, stands in grotesque contrast to her dainty sistren (though she shares their diaphanous wings). A note for folklore enthusiasts: Early has based her retelling on “La Belle au Bois Dormant” (“The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”) from Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé, published in 1697. Notably, the number of fairies here is seven, with the wicked fairy making eight (in the Grimms’ variant, they are twelve with the wicked fairy making thirteen). As reference for her illustrations of the royal castle, she cites the Château d’Ussé in the Loire Valley, the very building from which Charles Perrault is said to have drawn inspiration for the castle in his immortal fairy tale. #sleepingbeauty #sleeping #beauty #fairy #fairies #queen #king #princess #prince #book #books #childrensbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks