Please, Malese!

Publishers Weekly

This first-time team offers a dramatic retelling of stories from the Thousand and One Nights, super-saturated with life and color by illustrator Hirao. A dark-skinned fisherman in a bleached white robe casts his nets and finds a bottle. From it he releases a genie, whose gargantuan proportions Hirao emphasizes with a perspective that places readers at the blue-hued specter's knee. When, far from granting him wishes, the genie threatens to kill him, the fisherman warns him that evil will be repaid with evil, and in the Arabian Nights tradition illustrates his warning by telling him a story. In the story, Dhuban, a curious little stranger, saves a king's life and warns him not to forget the favor, illustrating his warning with still another story. The king disregards the fable, kills Dhuban, and discovers too late that evil is indeed repaid in kind. The fisherman, meanwhile, realizing that his story made no impression on the genie, outwits him. Elegantly designed and economically narrated, the volume showcases each tale in a unique font, and the lush backgrounds and exotically applied pastels unite the interrelated themes (especially the power of "Heaven and fate"). Odd angles and exaggerated perspectives add cinematic momentum to the spreads. Hirao's broad sweeps of shimmering blues and oranges vibrate against each other as intensely as the horror and humor in the stories themselves. An old classic made entirely contemporary. Ages 5-9. (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 2-5-MacDonald has taken an old tale of a trickster peasant and turned it into a new folktalelike story, cleverly building trick upon trick. After he finagles a new pair of shoes, Malese gets himself a free bottle of rum and a comfortable ride home on Bouki's overburdened donkey. When the villagers finally throw him in jail, his Tom Sawyer-like pleasure in the punishment persuades them that the prisoner is better off than the jailers, and they not only set him free but fix his house as well. The illustrations feature bright, flat backgrounds and rounded peasants dressed in vibrant, stylized prints. Their cheerful, primitive style suits the story, and children will enjoy following the zebra-striped cat that is Malese's constant companion. The author's note makes clear her sources and the liberties she's taken, leaving it up to librarians to decide if this book belongs in the folklore or fiction section.-Ellen Heath, Orchard School, Ridgewood, NJ Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The stories of Haiti are filled with the deeds of the clever, sly Ti Malice and his acquaintance Bouki, whose wits are not as nimble. In her author's note, MacDonald (Quentin Fenton Herter III, 2002, etc.) acknowledges using a tale of a "legendary shrewd peasant" referred to in a book on Haitian culture, The Magic Island (1929), by W.B. Seabrook, a New York Times reporter and a great traveler. Her character Malese (a variation on Ti Malice) fools various villagers into providing rum and shoes for him in an ingenious way, just as the peasant Theot Brun succeeded in doing in the original story, credited to Ernest Chauvet, publisher of Le Nouvelliste, a venerable Haitian newspaper. She has taken this story, whether legendary or true, and constructed her own trickster tale in which Malese not only winds up with a jug that is filled with more rum than water and a full pair of new shoes made to his specifications by two different cobblers, but also a donkey ride from Bouki. When his neighbors try to lock up Malese for a month to punish him for his illegitimate dealings, he uses his gift of gab to shame them into freeing him after only one day-and fixing his roof in the bargain. Lisker's (The Story of Shabbat, 2000, etc.) exciting paintings, with their intense tropical colors and bold forms, are reminiscent of Haitian paintings, but lack the detail and specificity of the most interesting of the country's naïf works. Readers can start here to get a taste of this particular trickster tradition and then go on to find other tales about Ti Malice. (author's note) (Folktale. 6-9)