From Booklist:
PreS-Gr. 2. The elemental story is powerful: a slave asks for his freedom, and his jeering master agrees if the slave spends the night alone on the peak of a snow-covered mountain, without clothes or shelter. The slave's best friend, a wise old man, climbs to the top of a nearby mountain and builds a fire; the old man's action serves as a light in the darkness that helps the slave survive and then go free. The textured, acrylic, double-paged paintings by Mexican artist VandenBroeck contrast the garish, clownlike grossness of the opulent master with spare, exquisite scenes of the mountain peak in the night. There's no frontal nudity, but the views of man, sky, and mountain resemble mythic scenes of the creation, volcanic and beautiful. There's one problem: the subtitle identifies the story as an Ethiopian folktale, but there are no sources. Where did Austrian writer Janisch find the story? What is the Ethiopian version called? Is the translation from the German? Hazel Rochman
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From School Library Journal:
Kindergarten-Grade 2-When a slave begs for freedom, his master scornfully replies that he may have that freedom only if can stand naked and alone on a snow-covered mountain all night long. The man agrees, but enlists the help of a friend, who climbs a second nearby mountain and builds a fire there. The slave watches the flames, survives the night, and is freed. Janisch's telling is spare in the extreme and provides only the bare bones of a story. A more fully fleshed out version appears in Harold Courlander's The Fire on the Mountain (Holt, 1995). VandenBroeck's illustrations, done in acrylics on paper prepared with a textured ground, are reasonably effective, but there is no real change of atmosphere to contrast the protagonist's condition before he climbs the mountain and while on it. The cover art is particularly dark and forbidding and not likely to attract readers.
Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ
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