![]() ![]() Vladyslav Yerko's painting are so beautiful, so marvelously detailed and engrossing, that it was a sheer pleasure to peruse them! From decorative endpaper to decorative endpaper, front to back, this is a visually stunning book. I've always found this rather odd, and have never been convinced, despite his one good quality, of giving generously to the poor, that the soldier is a hero worth cheering for.Īll that said, this presentation of The Tinderbox is, despite my usual distaste at the tale, so phenomenally gorgeous, that I am rating the book at five stars. ![]() Instead, the reader is apparently meant to sympathize with his change of fortune and to applaud his use of the dogs, whilst ignoring the fact tht he is a word-breaker, a murderer, and a pervet of sorts. Nor are his actions, in kidnapping the princess, just so he can look at her sleeping form, ever depicted as problematic. Rather, it seems entirely lacking in a moral outlook altogether, and the narrative never seems to question the ethics of the soldier's actions, in violating his agreement with the witch, going back on his word to turn over the tinderbox to her, and eventually murdering her. It doesn't have, like Andersen's The Red Shoes, with its narrative of a girl who is punished for her ingratitude and impiety with a terrible bodily disfigurement and violation, a moral outlike with which I would disagree. I was struck during the course of reading The Tinderbox, as I always am with this story, by how amoral of a tale it is. When this results in his imprisonment and imminent execution, he uses his dogs to destroy the king and queen and their advisors, marrying the princess and becoming king himself. Fortune restored, the soldier next uses his magical dogs to kidnap the kingdom's beautiful princess from her bed, so he might look on her in her sleep. It is then that he discover that the tinderbox controls and summons the three magical guard dogs who watched over the witch's underground treasure - the chest with bronze coins, the one with silver, and the one with gold. Becoming a gentleman of leisure with his newfound wealth, the soldier's fortune holds, until the money runs out. Agreeing to fetch the eponymous tinderbox for the witch, in return for all the money he can carry away from its underground hiding place, he ends up murdering the witch when she won't tell him how the tinderbox will be used, and keeping both it and the money. ![]() Here we have the classic story of a poor soldier, returning home from the wars, who encounters an old witch on his journey and finds his fortunes changed. Vladyslav Yerko, the fabulously talented Ukrainian artist and illustrator, whose edition of The Snow Queen ranks as one of my absolute favorite fairy-tale retellings, returns to the work of Hans Christian Andersen in this marvelous picture-book. The Tinderbox, illustrated by Vladyslav Yerko ![]()
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