Anne Isaacs

Anne Isaacs retells the Swamp Angel tall tale, featuring a female Tennessee woodswoman who is larger than life. She was as tall as her mother when she was born, and built her own log cabin at age two. The story begins with a few simple anecdotes establishing her mighty skills and huge size, but the majority of the book focuses on her fight with Thundering Tarnation, an hornery bear as large and powerful as Swamp Angel. Their epic scuffle takes days, and rolls all around most of the state of show more Tennessee, before Swamp Angel claims the victory. Her opponent is so valorous that she actually is saddened at his death. As is the custom in the tall tale genre, the stories associated with Swamp Angel are asserted to be entirely true, even when the opposite is obvious, and they involve many creation stories. For instance, she drags the bear's pelt to her new home in Montana, creating the Shortgrass Prairie. Or the Great Smoky Mountains obtaining their name from the vast amounts of dust that arose from the fight between Swamp Angel and the bear.

The author uses a voice that is perfect for the story. She embraces alliteration and hyperbole, and uses diction that evokes a homey feel, appropriate to tall tales and the frontier setting of the story. Also, the story is focused by dramatization of the fight between Swamp Angel and Tarnation; instead of sprawling out with multiple anecdotes such as one would find in an anthology of tall tales, this picture book is a story with a plot and resolution, which is more appealing for younger readers. The illustrations - drawn by amazing artist Zelinsky who specializes in fairy tales and tall tales - are gorgeous, and fully complement the style of the writing and the subject of the tale. The book specifies that they are oil paintings on wood veneers, another nice touch. The entire package is thoughtfully crafted and entertaining, and both children book readers and folk tale aficionados will want to add this to their library. show less

Anne Isaacs sets out to expand the American Tall-Tale pantheon with Swamp Angel, a Caldecott Honor Book from 1995, producing a humorous and engaging story in the process. With a decidedly tongue-in-cheek tone - when Angelica Longrider was born, the narrator assures us, there was nothing to indicate her future greatness, although she was (as a newborn) "scarcely taller than her mother and couldn't climb a tree without help" - and plenty of narrative excitement, this is a book sure to grab the show more young reader's attention! The accompanying illustrations by Paul O. Zelinsky, whose Rapunzel was a Caldecott Medal winner, are vivid and appealing, painted in oil on wooden backgrounds.

I know that some didn't care for this one, finding it too much of a rough-and-tumble kind of story, particularly as Swamp Angel's central adventure involved a protracted struggle with an unruly bear named Thundering Tarnation, but I thought that Isaacs did a marvelous job of capturing the feeling and tone of some of the original stories in the genre. Often, in projects such as these, when an author sets out to create an addition to a well-known (and loved) body of work, the result is glaringly anachronistic, but I could readily imagine Swamp Angel hobnobbing with the likes of Paul Bunyan or Daniel Boone. That's no small achievement, and together with the artwork, lifted this from three stars to four, in my book. Definitely one I recommend to readers who enjoy the Tall-Tale genre! show less

A tall tale full of fun exaggeration treated as true, from the fiery trails that speedy Estella leaves in her wake when she runs, to the fantastical animals that come to her for care, to the (so creatively!) frozen town of Luckless Gulch. When Estella's rock-breaking and -eating pets are stolen, she races all over pancake-flat California asking Gold Rush hopefuls for news. She hears of a mysterious frozen town greedy dead prospectors have frozen the land so they can dig in the dark they show more prefer...and what does an incorporeal ghost miner need but some rock-breaking animals to help? Good thing they don't call her Estella corriente, the running star, for nothing! Still, the angry ghosts creat enough of a ruckus to throw up quite a few hills and shake the ground from time to time.

Lots of fun, but picture book for an older audience--there's quite a bit of text on each page and the parts where Estella meets her three pets and where a miner tells her the stories of three starving prospectors slow down the pace a bit.

I also loved the whitewood-to-redwood detail (the white trees got sunburned when the hills put them too close to the sun), but couldn't fit it in here since it was kind of just a side note in the story. show less

Paul O. Zelinsky's name on the cover of Swamp Angel caught my eye as he became a favorite illustrator of mine after I read [b:Rumpelstiltskin|280240|Rumpelstiltskin|Paul O. Zelinsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388253409l/280240._SX50_.jpg|271837]. Unfortunately, not only is this modern fairy tale strange, Zelinsky's artwork isn't his best. Zelinsky's signature is use of oil paint. His illustrations can be realistic and finely detailed (best seen in show more characters' faces), a challenge with this particular medium. I was expecting gorgeous artwork in Swamp Angel , but although the illustrations are well done, they don't do justice to his talent. This book's ugly color palette, heavy on yellows and browns, also detracts.

Swamp Angel, an invention from Anne Isaacs, is a straightforward tale about a giant determined to win a competition to kill a menacing bear. The prize is the bear's enormous pelt, with a side prize of a generous amount of bear meat. When I think "fairy tale," I think of unusual or unique magic, fantasy, or magical realism. Fairy tales are special because of their creativity and because of the transportive images they conjure. Swamp Angel is merely a wrestling battle between Swamp Angel and the bear. That sounds exciting, but it's not, and there's no magic or wonder in it despite the presence of a tornado and giant. A wrestling battle is an uninspired, boring battle. Additionally, with its use of slang and colloquialisms (e.g., "varmint," "grub," "licked" [meaning "beat"], and "tarnation"), this book is inaccessible to children reading without an adult who could offer definitions.

The only inventive elements are in the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains (the result of dust kicked up during the match) and of Montana's Shortgrass Prairie (it's the pelt spread as a rug over the land). Otherwise this isn't a fairy tale but a half-baked story of barbarism that villainizes a majestic creature. Zelinsky's artistic talent is wasted, and Isaacs hasn't inspired me to seek out more of her work. show less