FICTION

Frankenstein: A BabyLit Anatomy Primer

by Jennifer Adams (text) & illus. by Alison Oliver
Gibbs Smith. (BabyLit). Aug. 2021. 22p. Board $9.99. ISBN 9781423637417.
COPY ISBN
PreS-K–Hitting most of the major plot points of the original, this simplistic preschool abridgement features a sweetly unthreatening monster and concludes with Frankenstein drifting cheerfully away on an Arctic ice floe with his animal friends. Saturated illustrations evoke the look of animated children’s films with fully realized backdrops of a Swiss village, the alpine countryside, and the North Pole. One almost expects the characters to start moving.
VERDICT Will this prepare children for Mary Shelley’s classic some decades hence? It’s both too complex and too simplified to matter.
Reviewed by Jan Aldrich Solow, formerly Fairfax County Public Sch., VA , Sep 17, 2021

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