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A review by cornmaven
The Flint Heart by John Paterson, Katherine Paterson
3.0
Best part of this book: John Rocco's illustrations, which are literally breathtaking. The story itself is kind of cool, a stereotypical fable about greed vs kindness, with the tale spanning several eras/generations. The flint heart is a sort of Lord of the Rings ring, capturing all who possess it and turning their souls to badness. And I like fairy stories.
Unfortunately, I felt that the Patersons tried to be way too cutesy with it - they are clearly railing against simplified storybooks, and upholding the fable/fairy/folktale tradition as superior to all other literary forms, which is debatable. The characters are good, but I think the authors got a big arrogant about the whole thing, to the point that sometimes the message gets lost.
Now, I missed the note that this was a "Freely Abridged" version of a 1910 tale before I started reading it, so perhaps some of the sentences are from the 1910 version. But why do that? Why not truly adapt it? For example, I found that the whole hanging/drawing/quartering thing might have worked fine in 1910, but it does not work now, I did not appreciate the whole "drawing" scene, and I honestly don't think kids reading it would understand it, because few will know what historical "drawing" was, and I am not sure I want a 5th grader to know that at this point, especially in light of the violence in the Middle East over the last decade, to which kids have been exposed. This may sound curmudgeonly, but there ya go.
I guess I just didn't like that they found it necessary to continue to use a rather lofty sentence structure and awfully big words to tell the story. It felt to me as if the story was only a vehicle for the political statement about storytelling, not the other way around. I feel this way about Hans Christian Andersen's tales - they're arrogant, too, at least to me. And some don't make sense at all to me, just ramblings. Now, Daniel Handler's use of big words through Lemony Snicket is much more productive, because the story is #1. Patersons' attempt may fall flat for a lot of readers, who might have just continued on reading stories in the genre if the attitude hadn't been there.
Unfortunately, I felt that the Patersons tried to be way too cutesy with it - they are clearly railing against simplified storybooks, and upholding the fable/fairy/folktale tradition as superior to all other literary forms, which is debatable. The characters are good, but I think the authors got a big arrogant about the whole thing, to the point that sometimes the message gets lost.
Now, I missed the note that this was a "Freely Abridged" version of a 1910 tale before I started reading it, so perhaps some of the sentences are from the 1910 version. But why do that? Why not truly adapt it? For example, I found that the whole hanging/drawing/quartering thing might have worked fine in 1910, but it does not work now, I did not appreciate the whole "drawing" scene, and I honestly don't think kids reading it would understand it, because few will know what historical "drawing" was, and I am not sure I want a 5th grader to know that at this point, especially in light of the violence in the Middle East over the last decade, to which kids have been exposed. This may sound curmudgeonly, but there ya go.
I guess I just didn't like that they found it necessary to continue to use a rather lofty sentence structure and awfully big words to tell the story. It felt to me as if the story was only a vehicle for the political statement about storytelling, not the other way around. I feel this way about Hans Christian Andersen's tales - they're arrogant, too, at least to me. And some don't make sense at all to me, just ramblings. Now, Daniel Handler's use of big words through Lemony Snicket is much more productive, because the story is #1. Patersons' attempt may fall flat for a lot of readers, who might have just continued on reading stories in the genre if the attitude hadn't been there.