Violet and Victor Write the Most Fabulous Fairy Tale

October 15, 2015
Twins Violet and Victor are back for another bout of collaborative (and sometimes competitive) writing. Violet, who loves writing and storytelling, sets about creating "the most fabulous fairy tale in the history of fairy tales." Victor, engrossed in his project about Australian animals, pooh-poohs make-believe. The twins spar in text type that's color-coded with their T-shirts--violet (natch) and orange, respectively. The tale they jointly create is written on rectangles of lavender or orange notebook paper, hand-lettered by the artist. Violet's rather schmaltzy start ("Fairy Tale Kingdom is a marvelous place") gets a jolt when Victor inserts a wicked witch who's annoyed over the portrayal of witches in fairy tales. She bans them, banishing "Princess Violet to an island in Fairy Tale Ocean. Violet could never write another fairy tale." Dismayed but undaunted, Violet recovers, regaling the witch with minitales of talented, happy, generous witches who bake cakes to share (with much-loved Australian animals, in fact). Murguia layers digital compositions with printed pages, doilies, maps, and swirls of stippled paint. Dark blue-greens and purples signal the fairy tale's arc, while white space is employed for the twins in situ. Their faces and skinny limbs loosely sketched against white space, the two join the marketplace's growing legion of cartoonish, de facto-Caucasian characters. A jam-packed view of the creative process of two imaginative siblings. (Picture book. 4-7)

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August 1, 2015

K-Gr 2-Twins Violet and Victor Small are right brain/left brain collaborators, who are writing their second book. Violet initiates the storytelling, but her brother's practical interruptions begin a series of exchanges that culminate in a story that pleases them both. This iteration by Kuipers and Murguia follows the same format as Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book (Little, Brown, 2014), and visual assists-color-coded notebook pages and dialogic font corresponding to each character's T-shirts (violet for Violet and orange for Victor)-help readers keep track of the action. The somewhat complicated narrative structure, alternating imaginary and actual events along with character voice, limits the title's use in a group setting, but young readers and writers will spend plenty of time examining the story on their own. Murguia's playful and lovely pencil drawings are matched to collages (book pages, paper sculpture, photographed objects, and more) that add layers to the visual narrative. The underlying message of cooperation and adaptation, perfect for 21st-century skills curriculum reinforcement. VERDICT A fine addition to picture book collections, especially where the first book has fans.-Lisa Lehmuller, East Providence School District, RI

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016
In their second outing, twins Violet and Victor antagonistically team-write a story: Violet is writing a fairy tale, but Victor is only interested in facts about Australian animals. The resulting hybrid tale humorously reflects the trajectory of the twins' conflict. The inventive illustrations incorporate real objects--in particular, pages from repurposed books--and rise to the metafictive challenge of the dual narrative.

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)