This is a very powerful rendering of the Snow White folktale, which was tamed so successfully in versions like Disney's film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." In this reading, it was interesting to pick up on the theme of addiction. Snow White finds it hard to resist the allurements of the evil queen disguised as a peasant mother. She falls into her trap every time, fatally when the beautiful apple is offered. Of course we know, Snow White's own mother died upon her birth and her father brought the wicked stepmother into her life. Before the seven dwarfs, she didn't really have protection--or any apparent parental love. And the Queen! She so desperately needs the attention that her beauty brings--that she is willing to murder. Her evil is punished as she dies an addicts' death, sentenced to dancing until she dies in shoes of iron that have been scalded in burning coal. The translation by Paul Heins is measured and dignified and as always Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations match the story beautifully. She is one of my favorite children's illustrators!

Of Trina Schart Hyman, edited from Wikipedia:

Trina Schart Hyman (April 8, 1939 – November 19, 2004) was an American illustrator of children's books. She illustrated over 150 books, including fairy tales and Arthurian legends. She won the 1985 Caldecott Medal for US picture book illustration, recognizing Saint George AND THE DRAGON as retold by Children's author Margaret Hodges. Born in Philadelphia to Margaret Doris Bruck and Albert H. Schart, young Tina grew up in Pennsylvania where she learned to read and draw at an early age. Her favorite story as a child was Little Red Riding Hood, and she spent an entire year of her childhood wearing a red cape. She enrolled at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (now part of the University of the Arts) in 1956, but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1959 after marrying Harris Hyman, a mathematician and engineer. She graduated from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1960.
The couple then moved to Stockholm, Sweden, for two years, where Trina studied at the Konstfackskolan (Swedish State Art School) and illustrated her first children's book, titled Toffe och den lilla bilen (Toffe and the Little Car). In 1963, the couple's daughter, Katrin Tchana (née Hyman), was born, but in 1968, they divorced, and Trina and Katrin moved to Lyme, New Hampshire. She was the first art director of Cricket Magazine, from 1973 to 1979, and contributed illustrations regularly until her death. She is also considered one of the first white American illustrators (after Ezra Jack Keats) to incorporate black characters into her illustrations regularly, as a matter of principle. This was in large part due to her daughter's marriage to a man from Cameroon. Her grandchildren appear in several of her books. Mother and daughter Katrin Tchana collaborated on The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women, retold by Katrin (2000); Sense Pass King: A Tale from Cameroon (2002); and Changing Woman and Her Sisters: Goddesses from Around the World (2006). A print portfolio was created from this book by Katrin Tchana and the Child at Heart Gallery. Hyman won the annual Caldecott Medal from the American Library Association, recognizing the year's best-illustrated U.S. children's picture book, for Saint George AND THE DRAGON, published by Little, Brown in 1984. For this powerful book, Schart Huyman collaborated with Margaret Hodges who wrote the text, retelling Edmund Spenser's version of the Saint George legend. Earlier, Schart Hyman won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for picture books, recognizing King Stork (Little, Brown, 1973), text by Howard Pyle (1853–1911).She must have been very pleased to win the Golden Kite Award for her illustration of Little Red Riding Hood in 1984. She also received three Caldecott Honors, for the retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" in 1984, "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins" by Eric Kimmel in 1990, and "A Child's Calendar" by John Updike in 2000. She was a Boston Globe–Horn Book picture book runner-up twice.
THE GOLEM by Barbara Rogasky and illustrated by Hyman won the 1997 National Jewish Book Award in the Children's Literature category.

At last I have found my seven dwarfs. To celebrate, I am releasing this gift from BookCrossing, a random community of book lovers. If you'd like to join the BookCrossing story of this book, please make a journal entry at our site with the BCID (bookcrossing ID) on the bookplate. BookCrossing is free to join and confidential. You don't have to join to comment.

I went by this East Point Little Free Library to free some more books today and found this book that I'd left there last year.

Hello! This a gift from BookCrossing, a random community of book lovers. If you'd like to join the BookCrossing story of this book, please make a journal entry at our site with the BCID (bookcrossing ID) on the bookplate. BookCrossing is free to join and confidential. You don't have to join to comment. This book release is dedicated to the prince who accidentally opened the glass lid of Snow White's coffin, bringing her life.