Ole Könnecke’s Dulcinea and the Forbidden Forest is a lighthearted modern fairytale with a cheerfully bold heroine. Könnecke introduces her: “Dulcinea often helped her father with the chores” alongside an illustration of the girl wielding a large axe overhead to chop firewood while her father gently rakes the grass.
When her father breaks his own rule of never going into the forbidden forest then fails to come home, Dulcinea knows she has to follow. She bypasses the dense thickets and murky moat, scales a tower, outwits the wicked witch and rescues her father from a woodcutter: “Leave my father alone!”
Then home together to enjoy blueberry pancakes.
She watches the sea and keeps the lights burning so her father can find his way home, but eventually must set out into the black night to find him: “The child took her mirror and a knife and went down to the beach… I can’t see a thing and I don’t know how this will turn out, thought the child.”
As readers, we know to trust such a resourceful child. This is the girl who knows how to fix things. Like Dulcinea, she uses her wits to rescue her father.
In To the Ice, Ida starts a game with her two friends, which becomes an epic adventure when they find themselves adrift on an ice floe. The children float far far away, plough through snow and ice, huddle in an ice cave to keep warm, encounter unusual penguins and finally find shelter in an old hut. They spend the whole winter out on the ice alone.
“Of course, we were worried and afraid, but if anyone lay awake crying then none of us could sleep. In the end, we decided that everyone who wanted to should cry at the same time, all together. After a few days everyone stopped crying and we slept quite well.”
Eventually—“after about a hundred years”— the children are ready for change:
“We’d better go home,” said Jack. “They’ve probably been worried.”
There are more dramatic adventures but the children make it back to the creek at the bottom of the garden.
These four books make a beautiful set. Different in their illustration style and the ebb and flow of their narrative, but each with a core that stays with you. These compelling children take on what the world brings them with the confidence that they have the right to choose what happens next in their own story.
Illustrations copyright Jill Calder, Ole Könnecke, Anna Höglund