Rocking-Horse Land - Hardcover

Housman, Laurence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688090141 ISBN 13: 9780688090142

Publisher: Lothrop Lee & Shepard, 1990

Synopsis

Prince Freedling loves the rocking horse he gets for his fifth birthday, but the creature becomes real every night and wants to be set free

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-4-- Opulent paintings outshine a retold story that fails as both a read-aloud or a read-alone. Freedling, a spoiled princeling, wantonly destroys all his birthday gifts--yet the boy loves his rocking horse, Rollonde. He generously allows the toy the freedom to visit fellow rocking horses. Poetic, overlong sentences tangle readers' tongues. Archaic terms ("tarradiddles" and "dissembling lot") are confusing, and most offensive is Freedling's toy-breaking and pet-tormenting. Only the character of Rollonde and the dreamlike illustrations may hold readers inside these pages. Rodanas' Rollonde is superb, causing the portraits of the stiff-faced prince to suffer in comparison. Scarlet and royal purples glow; cloud horses caper above an ethereal landscape. As a lush picture book, the story excels; the old-fashioned tale communicates a bygone age. However, Housman's prose, first published in the 1920s, will have little appeal to today's children. --Charlene Strickland, formerly at Albuquerque Pub . Lib ., NM
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lothrop Lee & Shepard
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0688090141
• ISBN 13: 9780688090142
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Rodanas Kristina