★ 10/10/2016
In a visually striking and fittingly dark interpretation of a tragic fairy tale, a one-legged tin soldier falls in love with a paper ballerina. After falling from a window, the soldier begins a circuitous journey, eventually swallowed by a fish. Colored in bold reds, blacks, and grays, Yoon’s angular mixed-media prints highlight the soldier’s stoicism and the perils he faces. Yoon (The Tiger Who Would Be King) confronts the story’s darkest moments head on: when a cook cuts open the fish and discovers the soldier inside, its blood and entrails pour out grotesquely. And, as in the original Andersen, the soldier and ballerina’s relationship ends in fire, as they are incinerated in a stove. Ages 6–9. (Nov.)
★"Colored in bold reds, blacks, and grays, Yoon's angular mixed-media prints highlight the soldier's stoicism and the perils he faces." — STARRED REVIEW, Publishers Weekly
"Hans Christian Andersen’s iconic tale of love, loyalty, and loss, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, is retold by Joohee Yoon using classic printmaking artistry with an avant-garde edge. In gray scale with vivid scarlet splashes, the story of the soldier and the ballerina unfolds, maintaining all the tragic dignity of the original while infusing a fresh and thrilling air of suspense and emotion, ideal for those experiencing the tin soldier’s journey for the first time or the fiftieth."—Foreword Reviews
"…absolutely stunning.” —Sally Morgan, The Curious Reader (Glen Rock, NJ)
"Yoon faithfully retells Andersen’s literary fairy tale in sober prose and dazzling illustrations, created by hand drawing, relief printing, and computer techniques. The story of the one-legged toy soldier who falls in love with a paper ballerina and accidentally embarks on a series of adventures certainly has its grim moments, and Yoon’s art—with its layered patterns and textures, limited palette (red, black, and gray), and dynamic perspectives—revels in these. ... Yoon’s art, with its intentionally static feel despite all those eye-catching patterns, evokes the heart of Andersen’s tale: the tragedy of the soldier’s steadfastness and enforced passivity."—Katrina Hedeen, The Horn Book ”I’m such a sucker for everything that [JooHee Yoon] makes, and this didn’t disappoint. She perfectly achieves a captivating story using black, white, red, and silver in graphic shapes, texture, and a beautiful style.” —The Reading Ninja
★ 12/01/2016
Gr 2–4—The steadfast tin soldier has only one leg. There was not enough tin to fill the mold, but this soldier can stand just as well as the others. The soldier falls for a beautiful paper ballerina in the child's playroom and catches the wrath of a frightening jack-in-the-box troll. This tale has love, envy, adventure, and the traditional tragic Andersen ending. Yoon has retold the story for a new generation of readers and illustrated it with her distinctive graphic-style mixed-media art. Done with a limited palette, the intense visual elements complement the high drama of the plot, and the detail and use of perspective are exquisite. There are many other picture book versions of this story, yet Yoon brings a fresh look and an accessible narrative. VERDICT This imaginative and appealing interpretation of the classic story is a must-have for any fairy-tale collection.—Kris Hickey, Columbus Metropolitan Library, OH
2016-10-08
Relief-print illustrations in red and black give this retelling of Andersen’s unhappy love story between a one-legged tin soldier and a ballerina doll a particularly dark edge.Yoon makes only minor changes to Andersen’s narrative, but her choices for color and imagery add naturalistic, even brutal notes. These are highlighted by the soldier’s encounters with a nightmarish jack-in-the-box “troll” and a huge, vicious sewer rat, followed by his later rediscovery amid the guts and gore of a fish being chopped up for the stew pot. Mirroring the soldier, the ballerina, frozen in midpirouette, is angled throughout so that only one leg is visible. Yoon’s figures are all flat, with fixed eyes and mottled surfaces. The deep black and vivid red color scheme casts a perfervid glare over jumbled settings and piles of antique toys (including, anachronistically, a retro-style robot) and looks particularly hellish in the depiction of the flames in which the lovers are climactically united…for an instant. Or maybe that’s supposed to be the consuming flames of love? This is not recommended for bedtime reading. A disturbing but, considering the storyline, entirely justified interpretation. (Picture book. 7-9)
In a young boy's room, a one-legged tin soldier stares lovingly at the ballerina doll, who also balances on one leg. When the boy carelessly places him on the windowsill, the little soldier falls to the street below and begins a journey that takes him to strange and dangerous places, and then brings him back home. There, in the flames of the stove, the tin soldier is finally united with his ballerina. This picture-book version of the classic fairy tale distills Andersen's original down to the essential narrative without fundamentally changing the nature of the story. The illustrations, varied in perspective and well composed for dramatic effect, tell the tale through a series of colorful double-page spreads that feature impressionistic views of nineteenth-century scenes. The simplified text makes this beautiful book suitable for a somewhat younger audience than the equally fine Seidler/Marcellino and Lewis/Lynch editions, both published in 1992.
