GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES illustrated by Arthur Rackham. 128 pages. Viking. $6.95. A predictable score of Grimm old favorites (samples: The Fisherman and His Wife, The Robber Bridegroom) with color and black-and-white pictures from the 1909 Rackham edition. The original English translation by Mrs. Edgar Lucas is laced with “prithees” and “shan’ts.” (The flounder says to the fisherman, “I shan’t be good to eat.”)
The Grimm illustrations brought Rackham, who died in 1939, his first great success. But he went on to do nearly everything from Scrooge to Cinderella, from The Sleeping Beauty to The Wind in the Willows. Rackham’s gnarled giants, dark woods and pallid, feathery Edwardian maidens still compel—and the price of this new edition is commendably low.
N.C. WYETH: The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals edited by Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen Jr. 335 pages. Crown. $29.95. More than a dozen of N.C. Wyeth-illustrated Scribner’s Classics (The Yearling, Westward Ho, The Black Arrow, The Deerslayer, etc.) are still in print in hardback from $6 to $10. This year Scribner’s is offering fancy paperback editions, at $3.95, all with original color, of Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and Sidney Lanier’s The Boy’s King Arthur.
Wyeth was trained by Howard Pyle and influenced by Michelangelo. His rich colors, massive compositions and skill at texture and light have made the brooding and heroic moments he painted almost as memorable as the celebrated stories he chose to illustrate. Wyeth fanciers who can’t get enough of the great man’s work by dusting off their old books or peering over their children’s shoulders should try this fine volume, which lovingly reproduces hundreds of Wyeth’s pictures, briefly recounts his life, and concludes with a 127-page bibliography of books, periodicals, dust jackets, postcards, newspapers, prints and folios that carried illustrations by Newell Convers Wyeth.
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER illustrated by Peter Spier. Unpaged. Doubleday. $5.95. Author-Illustrator Spier, 46, an academy-trained artist who grew up in Holland and migrated to the U.S. in 1952, is one of the finest creators of children’s books alive. He researches historic subjects (The Erie Canal, London Bridge Is Falling Down) for months, then meticulously re-creates an era in delicate pen-and-ink with pale watercolor washes. This time, with his customary blend of beauty and utility (opposite page), Spier presents the 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.
The text mainly consists of lines from the song’s forgettable and often unsingable lyrics. Spier first switches back and forth from the British fleet to the American defenders, then moves on to scenes from American history or contemporary life to illustrate the closing stanzas. Spier’s pictures bear long study and show everything from the new Congreve rockets used in the attack, to gunners’ swabs, sextants, belaying pins and the running rigging of a fleet of British men-of-war.
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