The Goose Girl: a Story from the Brothers Grimm

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kimmel, Eric A. 1995. THE GOOSE GIRL: A STORY FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM. Ill. by Robert Sauber. New York: Holiday House. ISBN 0-8234-1074-9.


PLOT SUMMARY
A naive, young princess travels with her cunning, self-serving maid to a far away kingdom where she is to marry the prince. The maid taunts the princess cruelly and forces her to trade clothes and horses. Upon their arrival at the distant kingdom, the maid is ushered inside the castle, and the princess is sent to help the boy who herds the geese. The King eventually learns the truth about the maid's deception and condemns her to a grisly death. The true princess marries the prince.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Eric Kimmel's retelling of the Brothers Grimm story of the goose girl incorporates all the traditional elements of a fairy tale. The story begins in the typical European manner with the phrase, "Once upon a time...." Characters include a princess, a prince, a talking horse, a goose herder, a king, and a maid. The princess and the maid are archetypes of good and evil respectively. Kimmel employs the style motif of a talking horse, Falada, who continues to repeat the phrase, "If your mother were to see, her heart would burst with grief for thee." even after the cruel maid has him killed.
The author uses well-recognized elements to place the story in a long ago kingdom. The women ride horses through a forest to a castle in a far away land where the princess is to wed a prince. The dress of the characters, the furnishings in the castle, and the style of the buildings are used by the illustrator, Robert Sauber, to help define the setting of the story. His painterly style uses deep, vibrant colors applied with broad, sweeping strokes. Each illustration is framed in a border which reinforces the sense that one is looking at oil paintings in an art gallery.
This beautifully illustrated tale of betrayal and courage will draw the reader into a world of castles, royalty, and talking horses. Love and goodness triumph in the end and they live "...happily ever after."

REVIEW EXCERPTS
Publishers Weekly: "This Brothers Grimm story of a good-hearted princess usurped by her maid and turned into a common goose girl is classic fairy tale fodder, and Kimmel revels in the magical, wistful aspects of this fanciful genre."
School Library Journal: "The story is propelled by Kimmel's perfect pacing and phrasing and by the vitality of the oil paintings, achieved through a sense of rapid dashes of color, with some scenes having an almost unfinished quality."

CONNECTIONS
>Read another work by the team of Kimmel and Sauber, I-Know-Not-What, I-Know-Not-Where: A Russian Tale. Compare and contrast the illustrations in this book with The Goose Girl. >Read other books that feature talking animals like Charlotte's Web.