Rip Van Winkle's Return by Eric A. Kimmel

Rip Van Winkle’s Return by Eric A. Kimmel. Pictures by Leonard Everett Fisher

 

 

1.      Bibliography

 Kimmel, Eric A. and Leonard Everett Fisher.  Rip Van Winkle’s Return. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0374363080

 

2.      Plot Summary

 Rip Van Winkle is a ne’er-do-well.  He does not take life seriously and plays, fishes or hangs about the tavern all day.  He does not contribute to tending his fields, raising his children or contributing to the household.  So, when his friends start talking about protesting the British tea tax, he decides to leave, run away and heads up into the mountains.  There he meets up with ghostly Henry Hudson and the crew of the Half Moon, he drinks mead with them and falls asleep.  He sleeps for 20 years and, needless to say, the world he comes back to is vastly different.

 
3.      Critical Analysis

Rip Van Winkle’s Return is an good retelling of Washington Irving’s short story Rip Van Winkle original published in 1819.  Eric Kimmel has made a few changes to the story giving Dame Van Winkle purpose for her nagging ways and having Rip (the elder) learn from his misspent youth.  Since the story was originally a short story, it is an ideal length for a picture book.  The characters are typical for the time period with a school master, innkeeper and a parson.  The setting of the story, in an old Dutch village right before the Revolutionary War making it a perfect book to tie-in to a history lesson for children ages 5-9.  The theme of escaping one’s present by falling asleep and waking many years later, has been around since 3 A.D. as told in an old Greek tale.  This retelling brings the tale to a new generation in a colorful and fantasy full way.

The illustrations by Leonard Everett Fisher are as rich as a painting.  He uses a palette of earthy shades with deep blue skies and lush green mountains.  The details tend to be a bit abstract with no clear edges but this adds to the mystery when you can’t see the bowling ‘ghosts’ clearly, only in shadow.  The illustrator also outlined all of the characters with clear black lines.  This allows the characters to be more visually present then the abstraction of the background.  The tone of the painting style makes the period of the story seem more dream-like, setting it apart from present day and lending itself to the muddled state Rip Van Winkle must have felt when he awoke.

 

4.      Review Excerpts

From Booklist: ‘This unique version of the most famous return in literature deserves a place in the majority of collections.”

From Publisher’s Weekly: “Kimmel's lilting prose does the tale proud."

From School Library Journal:” Kimmel and Fisher's offering can be seen from afar for group sharing.”

From Kirkus Review: ‘Kimmel remakes the Washington Irving classic into a shorter, more moralistic episode, preserving major events but changing the original by having Rip, after his long sleep, suffer remorse for his lazy ways and go forth with his grown children to become an industrious farmer.”

 
5.      Connections

Gather other variations of the Rip Van Winkle tale such as:

                Littledale Freya’s and Michael Dooling. Rip Van Winkle. ISBN 0590431137
                Irving, Washington and Will Moses. Rip Van Winkle.  ISBN 0399231528

Can be used in a unit on Washington Irving with other variations of his tales such as:

                 Stemple, Brooks and Matt Willard. The Devil and Tom Walker on Story Jumper
                 Weissman, Joe and Bill Slavin. Truly Scary Stories for Fearless Kids includes
                      The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  ISBN1550139940

Use in a social studies unit on the American Revolution

Use in an American history lesson to discuss the differences in American History in 20-year leaps.  (e.g., What would Americans of 1980 think of America of 2000).