Spanish / Venezuela
La noche de la huida
(The night of the escape)
Córdova, Adolfo
(text)
Segovia, Carmen
(illus.)
Caracas [et al.]: Ediciones Ekaré, 2021. – [38] p.
ISBN 978-84-123728-2-3
Snow White | Adaptation | Escape | Fear | Forest | Night | Picture book
Reading age: 5+
White Ravens issue: 2022
In »El dragón blanco« (The white dragon; 2016), Adolfo Córdova brilliantly transposed and developed secondary characters of children’s classics into imaginative new stories. Similarly, in »La noche de la huida« he extracts a short episode from the fairy tale »Snow White«, in which the heroine wanders about the forest before reaching the home of the seven dwarves, and turns it into a gripping tale. The narrator is apparently not the author himself, but a young girl who is shown on the last page of the book holding an edition of »Snow White« in her hands. In expressive, colourful words, the text describes all the fears that Snow White has while on the run: of darkness, rain, thorns, animals, and noises from unknown sources. Carmen Segovia stages the night-time forest as a secretive and ominous blue-black space, against which only the white dress of the protagonist and several red details shine out. This is a magnificent book that also demonstrates the freedom of storytelling and the boundlessness of the imagination. [JW]