Day 40, and Outside Over There, which is a creepy story with basically the same premise as Labyrinth only without the benefit of David Bowie in tights. Given what I said about Where The Wild Things Are I'm not sure why I thought I'd go for another Maurice Sendak, but I did. The story itself has a grim melancholic quality of a true dark fairy tale, but it has this awkward combination of lines that rhyme with those that don't, and a strange cadence that's really really difficult to read. But its the illustrations with their uncanny faces that makes it disturbing. I don't know ... I wanted to like this in the way that I liked the original (non-Disneyfied) Hans Christian Andersen tales I had as a kid (you know, where in The Little Mermaid, there is no happy ending), but its weirdness doesn't have a pleasing anchor for me to sit on to enjoy it. The pictures are weird, the text is weird. It's creepy and I'm not finding the BUT to recommend it.
NB. Further reading around reveals this story may have actually inspired Labyrinth. In which case, bravo to whoever decided to improve it by adding David Bowie in tights. That was a masterstroke.
Master A's verdict: No cues. Probably because my reading of it was so atrocious.
Details:
- Title: Outside Over There
- Author/Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
- Source: Borrowed from local library
- Publisher: Random House
What's on tomorrow? Another library pick.