Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse
by Marilyn Singer and Josee Masse (illus.)
In Mirror, Mirror, Singer offers her readers poetic shifts in points of view. Read one way, her poetry tells one story from a fairy tale. Read in reverse, they tell another character’s point of view. If you’ll pardon the pun, it puts a whole new twist on the fairy tale genre.
While I was intrigued by the concept and structure of this book, it gets old quickly. Once you read a few, you’ve pretty much got them all. The two voices could be the same character, feeling two different emotions. Or they could be two different characters – a princess and a prince. Fun to use as a writing exercise or prompt, but even at 30 pages, this book seemed to go on a bit long. Masse’s illustrations definitely augment the poems. They are bold and bright, and help you see the shift when the words fail to convey whose point of view we’re supposed to see.
Image taken from http://www.amazon.com.
Tags: book review, children's books, fairy tales, josee masse, marilyn singer, poetry, point of view
January 10, 2012 at 6:53 am |
I thought this book was going to be better than it was too. I didn’t really like it. There’s a book called The End by David LaRochelle that tells the fairy tale from the end to the beginning. I think that book was pretty good. DId you read that one?
January 10, 2012 at 10:23 pm |
I haven’t read that one – I’ll have to check it out! Thanks, Erik!