#517 of 1001 · December 30, 2021

Imagine a terrible threat looming on the horizon. Imagine the only member of your family leaves to face this threat. Imagine they do not come back, and you have no one to turn to. Now imagine that you yourself must venture forth to confront the deadly danger, and you will put yourself in the place of the brave heroine of Anna Höglund’s The Stone Giant, originally published in Swedish as Förvandlingen (“The Transformation”). A knight departs from his island home to battle a giant whose ferocious gaze turns humans to stone. His daughter, left alone, waits day after day, but he does not return. One night, her candle burns out and all is dark. Taking only a knife and a mirror, the child swims off the island and sets out to rescue her father. An old woman gives her an umbrella, which she uses to shield herself from the giant’s baleful stare. Then, she cuts a hole in the umbrella with her knife. When the giant peers down through the hole, she meets her own eyes in the child’s mirror and she turns herself to stone. Immediately, all the giant’s victims come to life again, and the child is happily reunited with her father. Höglund’s spare text, and translated into English by Julia Marshall, echoes with mythic power, particularly in the totemic symbolism of the supplies the child takes on her journey. The art, rendered in copper plate etchings and watercolors, presents an eerie, barren landscape in somber shades of gray. #stone #giant #island #child #knight #mirror #candle #knife #umbrella #book #books #childrensbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks