Gulliver by Mary Webb, Daniel Swift and Lauren O'Neill

Gulliver by Mary Webb, Daniel Swift and Lauren O'Neill
Buy Gulliver by Mary Webb, Daniel Swift and Lauren O'Neill at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: A great retelling of those first bits of the classic everyone knows, accompanied by marvellous pictures. A most cherishable slice of literary history for the young.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 80	Date: November 2015
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
ISBN: 9781847176769
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Be careful what you wish for. Gulliver wants adventure – and boy is he going to get it. His very first voyage ends in an almighty storm, which ends in him being washed onto a shore alone – but the shores of an island where he himself is almighty, compared to the inhabitants. After being shot at with the smallest of arrows, chained up, made a spectacle of – and sorted out a problem of etiquette most diplomatically – he tries again, only to be stranded on a second island, completely in contrast to the first… Whether or not you recognise the story from this summary, be relieved that this most perfectly conveys big ideas (and those of one big book in particular) for small people…

The Dean of Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral seems an unlikely place to turn to for one of the most distinctive classics-that-people-know-a-fair-bit-about-but-haven't-fully-read. And if this book has a fault is that it doesn't try to convey the thing from beginning to end, so there is no chance of it being fully read now. By looking at Lilliput and Brobdingnag, and with no horsey people in sight, nor flying (beyond that eagle-based cop-out), you don't get a full picture, and the satire is reduced to a mention here and there of the futility of warfare. But before the young audience intended for this lovely hardback try to pronounce the hu-houy-horsey people's name, what we do get is excellent.

First and foremost is the artwork. This is wonderful, packed with the best detail and joie de vivre. There is no reason for so much of the detail here – the girls in tutus and boys with eyeglasses gawping at Gulliver as they watch him in chains. The chap tobogganing down his thighs is sheer invention from the artist. The diverse monkeys act as a great foretelling of a late piece of drama, but otherwise are just bonus gifts of design craft. We'd got to that bit about the eggs before I flicked back and saw all the clues that it was on the way.

I'd blame that on the readability of the text in this child-friendly adaptation. The text hardly ever fills a full page, and that doesn't look burdensome, even given the large page size. The style seems both classic and contemporary, both in keeping with the early 18th Century when Swift was writing this, and the early 21st, when many people are destined to swiftly read it. The engaging first-person narrative, the chatty style of a friendly hero spilling the beans a thousandth time over a drink in a sailor's bar, but never minding one jot the repetition because every audience is a new friend in the making – the primary school readership will not appreciate this in those terms but will enjoy the book more because that's the approach taken.

I have never seen a version of this story, either picture book or glossy, FX-laden TV series, that has completely convinced me of the scale of things – yes, the Lilliputians are small and he's our size, but for part two it's always looked to my mind as if he's shrunk and the giants are us. Of course, it's never really part two of two, even if fewer people could tell you what happens in Laputa and the rest. I don't think, however distinctive the original work might be, that that many people have read it all. But what is certain is that this intelligently crafted, and deliciously illustrated, version, that never even edges towards being old-fashioned nor patronising, is most evidently distinctive, and really quite distinguished.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

An even more inspired retake of the tale can be found with Lilliput by Sam Gayton.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Gulliver by Mary Webb, Daniel Swift and Lauren O'Neill at Amazon.com.

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