Sunday, February 28, 2010

Cendrillon, A Caribbean Cinderella by Robert D. San Souci


Cendrillon, A Caribbean Cinderella, written by Robert. D. San Souci, is a story that is "loosely" based on the French Creole tale. Told from the perspective of the grandmother's point of view, the story is told of a young woman who wishes to attend the ball of Monsieur Thibault. The plot contains the typical elements of magic that many Cinderella tales include, and as predicted, Cendrillon was reunited with her Prince, married, and lived happily ever after.

Cendrillon incoporates words and phrases from the French Creole language. For example, the carriage was made from a fruit a pain, a breadfruit, and the carriage attendants were magically transformed from manicous, opposums. The author included a glossary at the end of the book which was helpful, however the colorful and detailed illustrations of Brian Pickney aided in the comprehension of the French Creole language.

San Souci did note, to my surprise, that that in island Creole, "Cinderella" would be written out "Sandriyon" through pronounced the same as Cendrillon;" and "Monseieur" would be "Missie." It made me wonder just exactly why if this was the Mer des Antilles (Martinique)version, that the author would not use the spellings known to this particular language of this Caribbean island. This makes it all the more important to investigate other Caribbean folkates to note the similarities and differences, and form conclusions based on a variety of literature.

Pickney's illustrations of oil pants contain colors bold and vibrant of the Caribbean culture. The full page bleeds include one larger illustration and blends into the next page with the text and bordering images, creating a flow of events from one page to the next.

1 comment:

  1. It's very useful that the author included a glossary, often only seen in nonfiction book, of Creole terms in the book. Is San Souci native to the Carribbean? I'd be curious to see if there are other Carribbean folktales, like you said, that include authentic "mother tongue" language.

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