The Steadfast Tin Soldier

Yoon (Beastly Verse, rev. 7/15) 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. The jack-in-the-box troll competing for the ballerina's love is menacing as he coils above the soldier and, later, as his red eyes peer out through a slit in the box. As the cook cleans the fish that ate the soldier after he floated into the sea, our hero lies amid pools of gruesome blood and guts on a grainy wooden cutting board. And at the tale's solemn conclusion, in which the tin soldier and the paper ballerina are together at last, only to perish in the stove, the textural rendering of flames is sumptuous, with just the right amount of abstraction. Most importantly, 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