The Goat-Faced Girl: A Classic Italian Folktale

by Leah Marinsky Sharpe (Retold by), Jane Marinsky (Illustrator)

Overview

Like many good fables, this story opens with a child left in the woods. A large lizard picks up the infant and takes her home, where she soon grows into a pretty, pampered, and generally useless young woman named Isabella. Despite her adoptive mother's efforts (for the lizard is really a witch in disguise) to shape her up, the girl prefers the alluring life offered her by the charming Prince Rupert, a world of cooks and servants, palaces and jewels, luxury and indolence. Luckily, the witch is a canny, concerned parent. She does not suffer fools lightly and is not about to let her daughter's too-easy transition to palace life go unchallenged. And so she arranges a surprise transformation for her daughter one that puts the prince's marital plans on hold and gives the witch just enough time to hammer home a few lessons about the downside of idleness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567923933
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	10/01/2009
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD910L (what's this?)
Age Range:	1 - 4 Years

About the Author

Leah Marinsky Sharpe has been fascinated with fairy and folk tales since she was a child. When her mother asked her to collaborate on a children’s book she thought immediately of The Goat-Faced Girl, a traditional story that left an impression on her when she came across years before.

Jane Marinsky is an illustrator whose work has appeared in many publications. Her two children's books with Godine are The Goat-Faced Girl and Just Perfect.

Editorial Reviews

Rich storytelling and intricately imagined artwork make this debut a standout. Raised by a lizard (how's that for a promising opening?), Isabella is lovely but lazy, and her lizard/sorceress mother gives her the head of a goat when she becomes engaged to Prince Rupert. Repulsed, Rupert gives Isabella three sham tasks to get her out of the way. Her trials give her the resourcefulness she's lacked and the moxie to boot Rupert out when he confesses that her goat head turns him off. Sharpe's retelling maintains a smart, modern tone throughout (as a swaddled foundling in the forest, Isabella becomes “a tripping hazard”), while fairy tale references add spice: “[I]n one kingdom nearby, they made the girls sleep on peas. In another, the girls had to attend balls in glass slippers.” Marinsky's paintings, in the chalky, sun-bleached colors of the Italian renaissance, contain many small pleasures: the woods and flowers of medieval tapestries, the goat-headed princess licking cupcake batter off her goat nose, and a portrait of the shallow prince's just fate. A must for anyone who would rather be a sorceress than a princess. Ages 6–up. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 2–4—This story is based on an Italian folktale by the same name, which can be found in Andrew Lang's The Grey Fairy Book (Kessinger, 2004). In a forest where foundlings appear every third Thursday, a large lizard discovers a baby girl. Transforming herself into a beautiful woman in a hooded garment with the same markings as her lizard skin, she raises the child as her own. Isabella grows into a very beautiful, very lazy young woman and falls in love with equally lazy Prince Rupert. Knowing that such a marriage will be disastrous, the lizard-lady gives her daughter the head of a goat. Stunned at the sight of her, Prince Rupert invents three tasks to postpone their marriage. She must grow turnips, prepare a feast worthy of royalty, and make herself a gorgeous gown. Working hard at each task, she regains her former beauty and realizes that the lazy prince has only valued her appearance. She ditches him, learns a little sorcery from her mother, and gives him a chicken head under his crown. Laziness replaces ingratitude, and self-reliance becomes a virtue. Full-color paintings done in rich hues capture a long-ago-and-far-away ambiance that melds nicely with more modern sensibilities. This tale is a pleasure to read, and the illustrations are an absolute delight.—Mary Jean Smith, Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN

School Library Journal

Though Marinsky dresses the cast in traditional fairy-tale hose and flowing gowns, there's a distinctly modern cast to this arch rendition of an old tale. When a beautiful but indolent young woman named Isabella accepts the proposal of equally lazy Prince Rupert, the doting sorceress who raised her in luxury, deciding that she needs to mend her ways first, endows her with a goat's head. The horrified prince tries to fob her off by assigning tasks like preparing a royal feast alone and creating her own luxurious gown-for which the sorceress provides cookbooks, pots and other tools. Eventually Isabella grows fond of doing for herself, regains her human topper and sends Rupert packing when he frankly admits that he only cared about her looks: "You mean to tell me . . . [y]ou only care about how I look? Not who I am?" Sharpe has made changes in theme (that goat's head was originally punishment for being ungrateful) and language, but this version, the story's first separate appearance in this country, will make a popular gift from parents and caregivers afflicted with similarly slothful younglings. (Picture book/folktale. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews