The selfish giant

In a modern reimagining of Wilde's classic tale, schoolchildren find refuge in a beautiful garden, but when a snarling, ginger-haired giant arrives, he angrily chases the children away and builds a "high wall" to keep them out-"He was a very selfish Giant." But while spring flowers bud beyond the garden, winter persists inside. Bowman personifies the snow and frost as two vulpine figures clothed in garments of snowflakes and ice, the North Wind as an owl with bright blue eyes, and hail as a basket-toting baboon. As the seasons pass, the Selfish Giant hunkers down, wishing for spring; eventually, he hears music outside his window. The children have returned to the garden, now blooming, and the giant knocks down the wall. While Wilde's unsettling ending and introduction of a Christ-like child bearing "the wounds of love" may prove perplexing for today's readers, this remains a hopeful-and strangely timely-story about generosity and redemption. Ages 5-8. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The richly sentimental 19th-century tale gets a 21st-century setting.Poor artistic decisions stymie a worthy effort. Preserved here unaltered (though printed in teeny-tiny type), Wilde's economically written original makes for, as ever, stately, sonorous reading, aloud or otherwise. Visually, Bowman's eye-filling garden scenes sandwich genuinely shiver-inducing tangles of dry stalks swathed in frost and snow between, in better seasons, views of luxuriant masses of outsized flowers and greenery. The giant is a red-haired, white gent in moderately antique clothingbut the tiny children he chases away (and later welcomes back) are a racially diverse lot in school uniforms and sporting backpacks and hula hoops. Taped-up advertisements on the outside of the giant's wall and other details further add to the understated contemporary air, and the smallest child, who comes back at the end bearing stigmata to welcome the now-elderly giant to his garden, has an unruly shock of dark hair and an olive complexion. All of this updating comes to naught, though, because with supreme disregard for the story's essentially solemn tone and cadences, Bowman arbitrarily sticks in silly bitsfirst depicting Hail as a baboon with a bright red butt (the garden's other winter residents are at least embodied as northern animals) and then in a climactic scene putting the giant into humongous footie pajamas decorated with bunnies and carrots. Talk about discordant notes.Opinions may differ about the story's sublimity; here it's been made ridiculous. (Picture book. 6-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden. It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. 'How happy we are here!' they cried to each other. One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden. 'What are you doing here?' he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away. 'My own garden is my own garden,' said the Giant; 'any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.' So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED He was a very selfish Giant. Excerpted from The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.