| Reviews and Honours
Caligula’s Horse and Other Creatures
The Queen of Paradise’s Garden Andy Jones & Darka Erdelji
“Jones’s retelling effectively captures the rhythms of oral storytelling and the cadences of Newfoundland dialect. Illustrator Darka Erdelji’s illustrations are a fine match. Enchanting, magical, and very skillful, they blend rich, evocative blues, greens, and reds, delicate line drawings in black and white, and rough, folk-art representations of the characters. All in all, a wonderful, rollicking tale.”
“Andy Jones and Darka Erdelji, along with small press publisher Marnie Parsons and designer Veselina Tomova, have created a marvellous book that deserves a place in every school, library and folktale collection.”
“The reteller is writer and actor Andy Jones, a founding member of Newfoundland's CODCO troupe. With this provenance, you might expect something original and quite fine; you won't be disappointed.”
“Andy Jones traditional folk tale opening has its own mischievous twist," Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, not in your time, indeed not in my time, but in olden times when quart bottles held half a gallon.....", and we are sitting , poised, at once ready for the obstacles, the awards, the good deeds, indeed for the Queen of Paradise herself. This is traditional storytelling at its best.”
“Sometimes a book is more than the text and illustrations between its covers; sometimes a book is a work of art in itself. The story of Peg Bearskin and the accompanying illustrations by Elly Cohen are a wonder, but to have a book with as much time and detail afforded to the type, design and printing, is an added bonus these days when publishers seem to deal with this as an afterthought. Indeed, a book as object d’art is a rare find these days.”
“This story is told in an immediate conversational voice, full of the salt tang of our easternmost province. The adapters Dinn and Jones, of Figgy Duff and CODCO fame respectively, have left enough traces of the Newfoundland dialect to give the tale authentic flavour . . . . . . . Cohen’s black-and-white linocuts, reminiscent of David Blackwood’s work, perfectly complement this homespun style. . . . . . . . Peg Bearskin is a wonderful introduction to Newfoundland’s rich oral culture.”
“Read the text and you will hear the voice of a local Newfoundland storyteller; take a closer look at the text and you will see true love for the art of bookmaking: Every single letter has been handset and each paragraph’s place on the page carefully considered. This unique tangibility of voice and type creates a strong sense of place, while the tale of Peg Bearskin itself makes ample use of universal narrative patterns: There are three daughters, three quests, and three husbands. But Peg is a ferociously ugly and thoroughly unconventional heroine who makes sure that the happy end holds a humorous surprise in store. Cohen’s stark black-and-white linocuts reveal the darker side of this traditional folk tale.”
“Dalton squeezes more meaning out of each and every simple word in her poems than the average prose writer can find in a yaffle of them.”
“Mary Dalton’s new chapbook is a delight….this tiny tome of thirteen poems is exquisitely made—evinces, in fact, extremely high production values—and exquisitely written.”
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