Rocking Horse Land: And Other Classic Tales of Dolls and Toys - Naomi Lewis
Six stories about toys that come to life.
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- Author:Naomi Lewis
- # of pages: 128
- Publisher:Candlewick Press
- Original Publication Date: 11/01/2000
- Genre: Fiction - Short Stories
- Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: Ages 9-12
- Read Aloud: 6+
- Read Alone: 9+
Parents need to know
Families can talk about favorite toys. Try making up your own stories about your toys coming to life.
Message
Social Behavior:
Children misbehave and are spoiled, a fairy is greedy, the stepsisters are mean.
Consumerism:
Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco:
Violence
Fairy-tale violence, such as wicked stepsisters turned to ash, etc. A visit to a witch's house, which stands on claws and is surrounded by glowing skulls.
Sex
Language
Common Sense says
What's the story?
Reviewed by Amy Brotman
Dolls protect their owners from a nasty fairy in "Rag Bag" and from a witch and evil stepsisters in "Vasilissa, Baba Yaga, and the Little Doll."
In "Rocking Horse Land," a young prince frees his beloved rocking horse and is rewarded in adulthood. And in E. Nesbit's "The Town in the Library," two siblings enter the world they create, only to be confronted by their toy soldiers.
Is it any good?
The best story in the collection is the title story, a tale both humorous and poignant about real love between child and toy, and about the repercussions of that love down through the generations.
For such a short story it has surprising complexity: The prince, though amusingly spoiled, is also selflessly loving and kind. It will make any child long for a rocking horse, and any adult long to give it, though the pictures of it are so magnificent that not just any rocking horse will do.
The weakest story, surprisingly, is the one from E. Nesbit, a novelist of justified renown. But "The Town in the Library" is confusing and disjointed, and doesn't seem to go anywhere.
The rest are very good. "Memoirs of a London Doll," the first chapter of a nineteenth-century novel, may well send readers scrambling to find a used copy of this out-of-print book, and "Rag Bag" gives old, worn-out dolls their due.
Angela Barrett's delicate illustrations are quite lovely, but many are reproduced as miniatures, which makes the details hard to make out. Even those that are given a page of their own have immense white borders, shrinking the size of the picture.
For another book of stories about toys, try The Kingfisher Book of Toy Stories. Toys come to life in many novels as well, such as The Indian in the Cupboard, Davin, The Castle in the Attic, and Finding Walter.
Parents and kids say



