Record Added: 11/6/2014 Setting  Norway Topic Fairytales, Myths, Folklo Publisher Little, Brown, & Company ISBN 0316770922 Year 1999 Age 9-12 Pages 32 Description Beautiful Illustrations w/
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Sanderson combines elements from the Chinese story "The Magic Brocade" and the Norwegian tale "Princess on the Glass Hill" in this seamless, stately picture book for older readers. Anna, whose brocades are known far and wide, awakens one night knowing she must weave what she saw in her dream. For nearly three years, she is driven by her vision of a marble mansion set among orchards, hills, and streams, but when her tapestry is complete, the winds of the fairies of the crystal mountain steal it.
Anna's three sons go, one at a time, to rescue the dream tapestry. It is the third one, persevering the fiery plain and the icy sea, who finally climbs the crystal mountain where the fairies hold his mother's life work. He retrieves it, but a red-and-gold fairy embroiders herself into its threads. When the young man arrives home and unfurls the tapestry, it shimmers into life, as does the fairy. The beautiful oil paintings are rich with medieval allusion and full of flora, fauna, and details--a lion's head on a horse's trappings, the lace of a fairy wing--that engage the eye again and again. |
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Author's Note: "The story is mainly told from the Chinese story, "The Magic Brocade" with a number of elements adapted from the Norwegian tale "The Princess on a Glass Hill". As I felt my style is not especially suited to a Chinese settings, I moved the story to Europe during the fifteenth century, a period of elaborate tapestry making."
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