Jen is both author and bookseller, and I'm a subscriber of her book related videos on YouTube. In her October haul of books she mentioned she'd fallen in love with The Sleeper and the Spindle (click here for the original video) and I just had to check it out - literally, from the library.
Essentially this beautifully illustrated book is the re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty and Snow White fairytales, where Snow White has to save Sleeping Beauty, but not all is as it seems.
The illustrations are dark and elaborately drawn in black ink, with the occasional highlight in gold, giving this edition an almost illuminated feeling. You'll need to know at the outset that this is a very dark tale, there is an abundance of skulls in the illustrations, and in my opinion, The Sleeper and the Spindle is for the mature reader, not for young kids.
Now for the rating, but this time it's a little difficult. I adored the illustrations (4 stars) but for me the re-imagined fairytale fell short of my expectations (2 stars) so I guess my rating is in the middle somewhere.
My rating = ***
Carpe Librum!
