Duffy and the Devil
By: Harve Zemach
Illustrated by: Margot Zemach
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
Duffy and the Devil was a popular play in Cornwall in the nineteenth century, performed at the Christmas season by groups of young people who went from house to house. The Zemachs have interpreted the folk tale which the play dramatized, recognizable as a version of the widespread Rumpelstiltskin story. Its main themes are familiar, but the character and details of this picture book are entirely Cornish, as robust and distinctive as the higgledy-piggledy, cliff-hanging villages that dot England's southwestern coast from Penzance to Lands End.
The language spoken by the Christmas players was a rich mixture of local English dialect and Old Cornish (similar to Welsh and Gaelic), and something of this flavor is preserved in Harve Zemach's retelling. Margot Zemach's pen-and-wash illustrations combine a refined sense of comedy with telling observation of character, felicitous drawing with decorative richness, to a degree that surpasses her own past accomplishments.
From the dust jacket
Cathedral
By: David Macaulay
Honor
Reviewed by: Sara Masarik
Also read and recommended by: Sherry Early
Part historical account, part engineering explanation, and part artistic expression, Cathedral takes the reader on a journey from the foundation to the dedication over decades.
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Three Jovial Huntsmen
By: Susan Jeffers
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
The woods are alive with animals—hiding among the tree trunks and between the roots and on branches above the hunters' heads.
But these hunters, the silly fellows, see only a sailing ship, a cheese and a pincushion instead of the watchful animals who surround them, jiggling inside with merriment.
From the dust jacket
