Rotten Island

Rating:
Summary: A Deathless Masterpiece
Review: This is a great book, and there is nothing else like it -- certainly not by anyone else, but it is also unique in the Steig canon. The comparison to Sendak's *Where the Wild Things Are* below is apt; both books deal with economies of human destructiveness, but Steig's wonderfully imagined, very funny, full-blooded account of unbridled cruelty burning itself out makes Sendak's book (fine as it is) seem timid and stagey in comparison. I first bought this book over ten years ago as a single, childless adult; I have never tired of it, and now my two boys -- age 5 & 7 -- haven't either. Buy it.

Rating:
Summary: A Deathless Masterpiece
Review: When I was a child (back then, it was "The Bad Island"), I would have my dad read this book to me over and over and over. I never tired of it, and I don't think he ever tired of reading it to me. Now I read it to my son, and I still love it.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but watered down since 1969
Review: When I was six, I love this book like crazy, so I am happy to see it back; however, I'm disappointed to find that at least half the text has been cut out, and what is left has been rewritten, apparently to make it easier to read or less intense.
Since Steig's fierce, colorful prose contributed as much to the impact of "The Bad Island" as his fierce, colorful pictures (which, by the way, look a little faded in the new Godine version), I'm still hoping for a definitive edition!
Compare the wreckage in the first edition: "It went on and on and on and one day it was finally over. Everyone had succeeded in killing everyone else off. The last ugly ogre had given his last gasp and the last serpent breathed its last flame, and the island was a gigantic heap of dead, scaly, thorny, fanged, horned, bug-eyed, barbed, bristling, saw-toothed carcasses, lying in ashes and embers, burning and giving off a dark, horrible smoke. And then there was nothing but hot ashes."
This is replaced in the Godine version by: "It went on and on and on, and one day it was all over. There was nothing left but smoke and smouldering ashes."
Big difference, eh? William Steig is one of our greatest writer/illustrators and this is his masterpiece. Five stars for the first edition; three stars for this new one.

Rating:
Summary: Ultimate transformation
Review: William Steig, now 93, made his foray into children's literature late, in 1968. By then, he had already been drawing cartoons and illustrations for the New Yorker for 38 years. And it was by no means certain that his launch into children's books, where large numbers of titles die each year, would succeed.

The late great New Yorker illustrator Arthur Getz, who in 50 years produced 213 of the magazine's covers, for example, created only four children's books, all of them now sadly out of print. But Steig became as prolific at children's books as he had been with adult humor.

This book exemplifies the praise that critic James E. Higgins lavished on Steig in Children's Literature and Education. He compared Steig to Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. B. White and select others whose work "reaches beyond the specific confines of a child audience." Steig, he wrote, shows an unusual childlike capacity to present incidents of wonder as if they happened every day--and an "essence of childhood which no adult can afford to give up or to deny."

The color and imagination in this 1969 volume places it at the pinnacle of Steig's children's collection. It reappeared in 1984 and again more recently. Unlike most of his children's books, the story offers no characters. Set in a boiling sea, the vile landscape that dominates it spouts fire, smoke, poison arrows, double-headed toads and hot lava. Even the plant life here sprouts horrible thorns and twisted spines. It thrives in an environment of hourly earthquakes, black tornadoes, lightening sprees, cyclones and dust storms, which freezes at night.

The creatures inhabiting this place appear equally grotesque. The serpents, sharp-clawed crabs, stingrays, high-voltage electric eels and other scaly, wart-covered denizens sport talons, tentacles, fangs, extra arms and eyes, armor, rusty nails and wheels for legs. The insects appear bug-eyed and hairy, covered in grit and petrified sauerkraut. No two are alike--except for their equal vanity, jealousy and delight in greeting one another with spit or shooting flames. Others' pain induces them to shake with laughter. Cruelty tickles them. They live in hatred--hissing, screaming, caterwauling and otherwise venting their hideous feelings.

Aside from showing children the hyperbolic worst likely to come of ill will and a venomous temper, what makes this book wonderful is the way in which this Paradise of hatred disintegrates and transforms into something beautiful. Alyssa A. Lappen