The Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief & Sinister

[=Author4; add Alexander Jansson to index]Illustrated by Alexander Jansson. Four "curators"--Bachmann, Catmull, Legrand, and Trevayne--fill their Cabinet of Curiosities museum with objects of wonder as well as the (often unearthly) tales behind them. The stories are remarkable both for their uniformly high quality and for their distinctness from one another; the abundant atmospherics, including occasional stark black-and-white illustrations, provide a unifying sense of dread.

Four "curators"--Bachmann, Catmull, Legrand, and Trevayne--travel to lands peregrine and outre to fill their Cabinet of Curiosities museum, sending back grotesqueries and objects of wonder as well as the tales behind them--tales that often bend to the tenebrous and unearthly. The table of contents lists the Cabinet's "rooms" and "drawers," each with a theme (cake, luck, tricks, flowers) and four or five tales to explore. In "The Cake Made Out of Teeth" ("collected by" Legrand) a spoiled-rotten boy must finish an entire cake made in his image, despite the sensation of teeth chewing him up with every bite. "Lucky, Lucky Girl" (Catmull) stars a young woman whose good luck seems to depend on the very bad luck of the people around her. In "Plum Boy and the Dead Man" (Bachmann), a rich and opinionated lad has a conversation with a corpse hanging from a tree...and ends up unwillingly changing places with the victim. "The Book of Bones" (Trevayne) features Eleanor Entwhistle, a plucky girl whose courage halts the work of a grave-robbing sorcerer. The stories are remarkable both for their uniformly high quality and for their distinctness from one another; the abundant atmospherics, including occasional stark black-and-white illustrations, provide a unifying sense of dread. The framing device--the curators send letters from the field introducing their latest discoveries--adds depths of mystery, danger, and idiosyncrasy to a book already swimming in each. anita l. burkam