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Annotated Award-Winning Titles

Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award 2006
(International Board on Books for Young People – Canada)
For best illustrations
The Lady of Shalott
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Illustrations: Geneviève Côté
Toronto: Kids Can Press,
2005. 46 p.
(Visions in Poetry)
ISBN 1553378741
Ages 10 and up

The Lady of Shalott
Source

The poem "The Lady of Shalott" tells the story of the impossible love between Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat, and Sir Lancelot, of Arthurian legend. Upon discovering that Lancelot is secretly in love with Queen Guinevere, Elaine is broken-hearted and leaves on her own for the Island of Shalott where she dies of sadness.

The poem, published for the first time in 1833 by Tennyson, is considered his most beautiful and mysterious work. Geneviève Côté gives us a modern interpretation of this classic of the Victorian era without sacrificing any of the romantic imagery in the poem. Her flowing and oblique watercolours give the characters a whimisical appearance that complements the gentle, melancholy tone of the poem.

The rich symbolism of the work is brought to life through spellbinding metaphors. The image of the fair lady turning into a butterfly and leaving her chrysalis behind to fly away from the tower of Shalott dispels the myth of a woman's doom to an unhappy fate. Instead, the work of Geneviève Côté offers the reader a hymn to freedom and love.

–DSH