The Nutcracker

September 1, 2021
Brett applies her signature visual storytelling style to the Christmas favorite. By setting her tale in a snowy, 19th-century Russian city and including in her trademark marginal vignettes both golden musical staves crowded with notes and animal instrumentalists clad in traditional Russian attire, Brett situates this retelling in Tchaikovsky's ballet rather than Hoffman's original story, though she retains Hoffman's names. And as the ballet does, Brett crams her stage with characters, beginning with the Christmas party when Drosselmeier presents Marie with the Nutcracker and continuing through the battle with the Mouse King to Marie and the Nutcracker's visit to what is here called the land of the Snow Princess. Once there, anthropomorphic Russian animals replace the ethnically stereotyped sweets of the ballet, with arctic foxes, flying squirrels, and hedgehogs taking turns in a snowy wonderland. Like the plot of the ballet, not much makes sense under close examination; unlike the ballet, Brett's figures display very little movement, so hemmed in are they. Even compositions with relatively few figures feel crowded with decorative detail and superfluous tiny animals, so much so that readers may need to work hard to parse meaning. Despite its adherence to the plot of the ballet, this is not a particularly good preparation for it, but readers already familiar with it may enjoy taking in Brett's vision. All human characters present White. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Both busy and meandering, but readers may like the dancing Cossack bears. (Picture book. 4-8)

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September 13, 2021
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s famous Christmas story of the girl and the wooden nutcracker receives Brett’s signature treatment in this picture book rendition, which features rich embellishments, white characters in elaborate period costumes, intricate movement and detail, and vignettes around many spreads’ borders. Keeping to the story’s well-known arc, Brett imagines visual variations in watercolor and gouache spreads that interweave moments from the ballet. Instead of human characters, animals are cast in the traditional second act: Bears dance the Russian Trepak, Arctic foxes perform the Danse Arabe (“their foxtails entwining”), and reindeer with candles on their antlers accompany Marie to a gingerbread house, where waltzing hedgehogs’ quills are studded with tiny yellow flowers. Vivid, descriptive language adds further depth: “The sleigh glided through a dreamland of icicles until they heard lively music—molto vivace—playing.” A Christmas confection laced with an Old World sensibility. Ages 4–8.

November 1, 2021
Brett (whose many other Christmas titles include The Twelve Days of Christmas; Home for Christmas, rev. 11/11; and The Animals' Santa, rev. 11/14) pulls out all the stops for this lush and faithful retelling of Hoffmann's tale and Tchaikovsky's ballet, guiding readers through the story with clear visual references to the latter's music and the dances. Detailed watercolors on double-page spreads carry the plot, while narrative-filled borders show pertinent musical instruments and scraps of the score. Brett sets the story in a Russia filled with snowy exteriors and sumptuous scenes of the ballet's Christmas party, the dramatic vanquishing of the Mouse King, and the rest of Marie's magical adventures with the Nutcracker-turned-real-boy. Martha V. Parravano

(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2021
Brett (whose many other Christmas titles include The Twelve Days of Christmas; Home for Christmas, rev. 11/11; and The Animals' Santa, rev. 11/14) pulls out all the stops for this lush and faithful retelling of Hoffmann's tale and Tchaikovsky's ballet, guiding readers through the story with clear visual references to the latter's music and the dances. Detailed watercolors on double-page spreads carry the plot, while narrative-filled borders show pertinent musical instruments and scraps of the score. Brett sets the story in a Russia filled with snowy exteriors and sumptuous scenes of the ballet's Christmas party, the dramatic vanquishing of the Mouse King, and the rest of Marie's magical adventures with the Nutcracker-turned-real-boy.

(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)