[singing]
Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you’re part of a team . . . . [stops singing]
Oh, hey! You might not hear from me for a little while. But I thought I’d try to
give you one of my soon-to-be-classic review columns before I go
(classic-ness based on personal tastes.
Not my fault if someone disagrees).
So, I’m going to give you my review of this:
Now, before I go any further, who knows what a fumetti book
is? I see one, maybe two hands in the
back. Well, in Italian it means “little
puffs of smoke” as a reference to the way thought bubbles look. It’s an Italian word for comic books. Here in the United States though, we use the
word to describe a comic book that uses photos instead of drawings. Brick
Fairy Tales is essentially a fumetti book.
What the creators of this book (John McCann, Monica Sweeney
and Becky Thomas) have essentially done is recreated and retold thirteen fairy
tales by our old pals the Brothers Grimm
Completely out of Lego bricks.
You have to admire all the work they put into this. The introduction makes this abundantly
clear. I quote: “Each tale is told in
its original form and remains unabridged, and each of the photographs has been
crafted with special dedication to the humor, gore and peculiarities of the
folklore itself.”
Whew. I’m getting
tired just thinking about it.
Now, while the work and attention to detail are admirable, I
find it hard to reward their choice of stories.
At least, I find it hard until the end of the book. The first eight stories are ones I’ve heard
over and over. I won’t list them. You could
probably guess which ones they are.
Anyway, other than being portrayed in Lego form, they’re not really that
different from what you’d expect. It’s
once you get to story number nine, “Clever Hans” that things got interesting
for me. I thought they did a very funny
“Clever Hans” and “Sweet Porridge” and admirable takes on “Godfather Death” and
“King Thrushbeard”. Their “Shoes That Were
Danced to Pieces” was so-so.
Looking through the book, I find it amusing to see what
great lengths they went to in order to get pieces and figures to build these
stories. You can tell they had to raid a
number of different Lego sets to get what they wanted, including Lord of the
Rings and Star Wars sets. Priests are
often clearly wearing Jedi robes and their Devil from “Godfather Death” is
obviously Darth Maul with a bigger set of horns.
Lego is a brand that is respected by both kids and geeks
everywhere, much like the Brothers Grimm are.
It’s nice to see someone put so much work to bring the two
together. Especially since Lego proper
has gotten into the fairy tale business but with a license you could probably expect. Am I going to say this is a
must-read. Not really. If you know the stories of “Cinderella”,
“Snow White”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, etc by Grimm, then the stories won’t
offer you too much. However, it’s still
an altogether admirable piece of work and if it’s the kind of thing you like
(fumetti or Lego or popular fairy tales) then go ahead and give it a read.
Now if only I could get this song out of my head . . . [singing]
Everything is awesome when we’re living our dream . . .
Gee whiz, thanks so much for getting that song stuck in *my* head, too.
ReplyDelete(BTW, in case you're wondering who I am, it's quillandqwerty in my google incarnation)