The Brave Little Tailor

by Brothers Grimm, Margaret Hunt (Translator)

Overview

There was once a tailor who killed seven flies at one stroke. He was so proud of himself that he made a belt embroidered with the words "Seven at one stroke". Then a giant saw the tailor and he thought that our friend had killed seven people at once. Can you imagine what type of misinterpretation we are talking about? So he challenged the tailor. Squeeze a rock until it drips, throw a stone further than the eyes can see. And each time the tailor won. Can he be that strong? Is he hiding something? Will he have the courage to kill not only one, but two giants and what will he get in return. Find out in "The Brave Little Tailor" by Brothers Grimm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788726591897
Publisher:	Saga Egmont International
Publication date:	10/26/2020
Series:	Grimm's Fairy Tales , #20
Sold by:	De Marque
Format:	eBook
Pages:	10
File size:	248 KB

About the Author

After studying at Marburg, Jacob became a clerk in the War Office at Kassel, and in 1808 librarian to Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. In 1841 he received Professorship at Berlin, and in 1854 began work on Deutsches Worterbuch with his brother.

Anthea Bell (translator) is the recipient of the Schlegel Tieck Prize for translation from German, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2002 for the translation of W. G. Sebald's "Austerlitz", and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation. She lives in Cambridge, England.

Place of Birth:

Hanau, Germany

Place of Death:

Berlin, Germany

Editorial Reviews

Monstrous giants fight to the death and a disagreeable hero wins the throne in this ironic Grimm story, ghoulishly illustrated in hues of fire and brimstone. The "little tailor" of the title is not so much a brave underdog as a cocky and devious man, and the pictures, accordingly, are anti-heroic. The adventure begins when the tailor swats seven flies at once, and celebrates by sewing a belt that reads "Seven at a blow!" The boastful belt piques the interest of a giant, against whom he wins contests of strength, and then a king, who sets a series of feats with his daughter and half his kingdom as a reward. Goloshapov (The Six Servants) illustrates this violent folktale with sinister images of dead trees and rocky wastelands. His muscular, gnarly-fingered giants resemble Frankensteins, and his palette is gloomy: volcanic red, meteoric yellow and bottle green flare against backgrounds of ebony and dark brown. The book's format is unusually tall, and the artist uses this shape to his advantage by establishing the reader's perspective as low within the artwork, making the story's giants loom menacingly. This nightmarish vision adds a dark allure to an unsympathetic tale.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

Monstrous giants fight to the death and a disagreeable hero wins the throne in this ironic Grimm story, ghoulishly illustrated in hues of fire and brimstone. The "little tailor" of the title is not so much a brave underdog as a cocky and devious man, and the pictures, accordingly, are anti-heroic. The adventure begins when the tailor swats seven flies at once, and celebrates by sewing a belt that reads "Seven at a blow!" The boastful belt piques the interest of a giant, against whom he wins contests of strength, and then a king, who sets a series of feats with his daughter and half his kingdom as a reward. Goloshapov (The Six Servants) illustrates this violent folktale with sinister images of dead trees and rocky wastelands. His muscular, gnarly-fingered giants resemble Frankensteins, and his palette is gloomy: volcanic red, meteoric yellow and bottle green flare against backgrounds of ebony and dark brown. The book's format is unusually tall, and the artist uses this shape to his advantage by establishing the reader's perspective as low within the artwork, making the story's giants loom menacingly. This nightmarish vision adds a dark allure to an unsympathetic tale. Ages 5-8. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 3-5Goloshapov uses watercolor, gouache, and ink to illustrate the well-known Grimms' tale. His dark palette and grotesquely distorted figures give the story a bleak and surreal look. Bell's translation is lively and spirited, but the cheerful and irrepressible tailor is overwhelmed in the paintings by the giants and monsters he must vanquish. The unicorn has green spots all over its white body and a green horn and hoovesa unique vision to be sure but one that is oddly disturbing and adds nothing to the story. The book's layout makes it difficult to read because too often the text is printed on such dark and mottled backgrounds that the words are barely visible. Versions illustrated by Freya Littledale (Scholastic, 1990) and James Warhola (S & S, 1992) are better suited for young readers.Connie C. Rockman, formerly at Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT

School Library Journal

One of the Grimms' more eccentric tales receives the outlandish attention of Goloshapov (The Six Servants, 1996, etc.), whose ominous illustrations give the story its due. The tailor of the title starts to entertain visions of his heroism after he swats seven flies dead in a single swipe. So smitten by this act is he that he sews a belt to commemorate the event, stitched with the words "Seven at a blow!" The tailor sets out to seek his fortune, conquering one brutish character after another—giant louts, vicious animals, conniving royalty—through cleverness and luck. When he is made king, it seems only natural. The tailor's goofy countenance belies his instinct for survival; the giants are massive dimwits with lantern jaws—ideal as foes. The rest of the artwork is equally full of character: a unicorn with a devilish horn, a bewhiskered boar. The atmosphere is perfect, but Goloshapov finds so many sinister landscapes and backdrops for the tailor's successes that the type—running across veins of blood-red or along dark, scumbled textures—is occasionally difficult to read, making the text more of an afterthought than an essential component of the page.

Kirkus Reviews