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A review by rebekah_nobody
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
5.0
Madeline is lodged in my memory as a visually faithful catalogue of all my childhood phobias.
The strict schoolmistress with her blotchy black habit, spunky Madeline in her uniform and crooked bow, conspicuous among the others who stand so samely in two neat rows. A nameless illness late at night - possibly contagious? Nightmare colors, yellow and purple, hues of bruises, elongated forms, scenes stretched like rubber bands in a tension dream - and adults looking down when they read it to you with an expression on their face like isn’t it quaint when how could anyone possibly be following the words?
I didn’t understand that she had appendicitis and I didn’t think the nuns were helping her and I didn’t interpret the wailing of the girls in the hall as harmless at all.
Thumbing through the book now, I find the illustrations lovely - swirling and whimsical, while balancing a certain literal accuracy. Paris is recognizable on every page but the world Bemelmans evokes is his own. The simple rhyme scheme, the tone of pseudo-grandeur, the petulance of the girls - the quaintness of it I confess - this is what I see now.
- 2004, Children’s Literature with Dr. Doris Walters
The strict schoolmistress with her blotchy black habit, spunky Madeline in her uniform and crooked bow, conspicuous among the others who stand so samely in two neat rows. A nameless illness late at night - possibly contagious? Nightmare colors, yellow and purple, hues of bruises, elongated forms, scenes stretched like rubber bands in a tension dream - and adults looking down when they read it to you with an expression on their face like isn’t it quaint when how could anyone possibly be following the words?
I didn’t understand that she had appendicitis and I didn’t think the nuns were helping her and I didn’t interpret the wailing of the girls in the hall as harmless at all.
Thumbing through the book now, I find the illustrations lovely - swirling and whimsical, while balancing a certain literal accuracy. Paris is recognizable on every page but the world Bemelmans evokes is his own. The simple rhyme scheme, the tone of pseudo-grandeur, the petulance of the girls - the quaintness of it I confess - this is what I see now.
- 2004, Children’s Literature with Dr. Doris Walters