Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | JP WILDE | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
With stunning illustrations, this edition of Oscar Wilde's fairy tale tells of a group of children who play in a giant's lovely garden. After a long absence, the giant returns and selfishly banishes the children. As a result, he is condemned to live in a perpetual state of winter. After waiting and waiting for the spring to come, he decides to change his ways and welcomes the children back. Text copyright 2004 Lectorum Publications, Inc.
Author Notes
Flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde had a reputation that preceded him, especially in his early career. He was born to a middle-class Irish family (his father was a surgeon) and was trained as a scholarship boy at Trinity College, Dublin. He subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pater, whose aestheticism was taken to its radical extreme in Wilde's work. By 1879 he was already known as a wit and a dandy; soon after, in fact, he was satirized in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.
Largely on the strength of his public persona, Wilde undertook a lecture tour to the United States in 1882, where he saw his play Vera open---unsuccessfully---in New York. His first published volume, Poems, which met with some degree of approbation, appeared at this time. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of an Irish lawyer, and within two years they had two sons. During this period he wrote, among others, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), his only novel, which scandalized many readers and was widely denounced as immoral. Wilde simultaneously dismissed and encouraged such criticism with his statement in the preface, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all."
In 1891 Wilde published A House of Pomegranates, a collection of fantasy tales, and in 1892 gained commercial and critical success with his play, Lady Windermere's Fan He followed this comedy with A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). During this period he also wrote Salome, in French, but was unable to obtain a license for it in England. Performed in Paris in 1896, the play was translated and published in England in 1894 by Lord Alfred Douglas and was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.
Lord Alfred was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, who objected to his son's spending so much time with Wilde because of Wilde's flamboyant behavior and homosexual relationships. In 1895, after being publicly insulted by the marquess, Wilde brought an unsuccessful slander suit against the peer. The result of his inability to prove slander was his own trial on charges of sodomy, of which he was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor. During his time in prison, he wrote a scathing rebuke to Lord Alfred, published in 1905 as De Profundis. In it he argues that his conduct was a result of his standing "in symbolic relations to the art and culture" of his time. After his release, Wilde left England for Paris, where he wrote what may be his most famous poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), drawn from his prison experiences. Among his other notable writing is The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), which argues for individualism and freedom of artistic expression.
There has been a revived interest in Wilde's work; among the best recent volumes are Richard Ellmann's, Oscar Wilde and Regenia Gagnier's Idylls of the Marketplace , two works that vary widely in their critical assumptions and approach to Wilde but that offer rich insights into his complex character.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-6 Although the illustrations for this version of Wilde's classic parable are not as visually affecting as Lisbeth Zwerger's delicate watercolors (Picture Book Studio, 1984), children will be drawn to the color and humor of Mansell's drawings. Mansell (like Zwerger) leaves Wilde's enchanting text intact. Mansell's portrayal of the crochety giant is non-frightening and full of humorous detail. Young children might find the last part of the story frightening, and the crucifixion wounds might require an explanation that would be uncomfortable to some adults. This is a beautifully written tale, however, and Mansell's illustrations are not at all fearsomeeven the full-page illustration of the dead giant is gentle, and the stigmata might be missed by an untrained eye. With these cautionary notes, this version as well as Zwerger's complement Wilde's powerful, moving tale, although Zwerger's is still a first choice. Barbara McGinn, Oak Hill Elementary School, Severna Park, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Wilde's poignant tale of redemption deserves the renewed attention this volume gives it. In the story, a fierce giant who forbids little children to play in his garden is befriended by one small fellow. The giant's heart melts, and he allows the children to enter the garden, but the special child doesn't return for some time. At last the child appears, this time with holes in his hands and feet. ``You let me play once in your garden,'' he tells the giant. ``Today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.'' Mansell's illustrations combine a Tony Ross-like zaniness with a sense of the mysterious that perfectly underscores the story's spiritual theme. Ages 69. (April) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Wilde's Victorian literary fairy tale about the giant whose wintry heart is thawed by love has been illustrated with impressive paintings. The children who bring spring to the giant's garden are a motley bunch, culturally diverse, serious and playful, curious and heedless; the giant is pictured as merely a very tall, gawky man. A handsome and sympathetic version of the famous story. From HORN BOOK 1995, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Oscar Wilde wrote fairy tales for people of tender sensibility--those who find charm in the notion that birds would stop singing and trees forget to blossom because the children who used to play in their midst have been expelled. From that conceit the converse of course must follow: after winter has hung on and on in the giant's now-unfrequented garden, the children creep back in through a hole in the wall and climb up into the branches; and ""the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they. . . covered themselves with blossoms [while] the birds twittered in delight."" But if this strikes you as pathetic fallacy at its sappiest, you won't be touched to see the giant redeem himself by helping the tiniest of the children up into the one still-frosty, unoccupied tree--nor will you be moved to find him reunited with the child at last when the little one shows up, scarred with stigmata, to take the giant off to Paradise. Foreman's pale, tissue-soft fairyland is prettier by far than Kaj Beckman's garish setting for last year's The Happy Prince, but it won't help you relate to the story on Wilde's or any terms. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 6-8. The familiar Wilde tale is well served by Gallagher's illustrations, in which the clothing and the faces of the children who come into the blooming garden are in strong contrast to the costumes and figures of the people who rule the wintry landscape after the selfish giant has exiled the children. The giant's size is also well handled: it's clear that every adult looks like a giant to a child. The story's ending, which implies that the child has returned to take the giant to Paradise, should be noted as a departure from what some readers expect in the giant genre. --Mary Harris VeederAudiovisual Boxed reviews