Donna Diamond

'The Shadow' is a wordless picture book by Donna Diamond. Such an interesting book. When it comes to wordless books, the author/illustrator has to rely on invoking emotions from the reader(viewer for wordless?) The story focuses on a little girl returning home alone. From the very start you see a dark shadow with glowing yellow eyes. In every page spread the threatening shadow is attached to the girl. After the girl is finished drawing she see her shadow and becomes frightened! Every time she moves the shadow with glowing eyes follows her. It taunts her by mimicking everything the girl does. Fed up, the girl becomes frustrated with the dark shadow scaring her and fixes the bright light bulb on a wall in her room. The dark shadow is no more. The story is very well done with its artwork. Every page spread has a sort of fish eye lens look as the view point seems as if their is an eerie spectator following the girls life. With no other characters being around you get a lonely feeling reading the story. I began to become scared with the book opened. The shadow is very scary to look in its eyes. When the girl realizes how scary the shadow looks and places her arms up, the shadow mimics her fingers, but distorting them into claws to add a fearsome look to it. The detail in the story beyond these to characters is interesting as well. The girl is seen drawing scary creatures before she discovers the scar looking shadow.This tells me these were thoughts on her mind and took form as the scary shadow. This continues in the story as you can see two dolls sitting on the girl's shelf in her room start smiling and are seen cheering as the conquers her fears of being afraid of her shadow. An amazingly illustrated story by Diamond in its art, story, tone and moral.… (mere)

In my opinion this book was okay. I liked this book because of the illustrations. The pictures had a lot of detail that showed how the little man or how the princess was feeling. The pictures were very engaging to the reader. I did not like this book because of the plot. It had a conflict and solution but I think having the little man want the princess's first born child or how he dies at the end was not a way students 3-6th grade to read at the end of this story. I think the main idea of this story was to tell students about the traditional Rumpelstiltskin but in a different twist.… (mere)

This is a timeless tale that has a number of morals and lessons that can be taken from it, but I think the greatest idea it emphasizes is that actions do not come without consequences. I liked a number of things about this story. The plot of this story was well organized and it had a sense of suspense and tension. In the story, the miller's daughter is troubled when she is forced to spin hay into gold but can't. The readers are left wondering if she will die or not, but then Rumpelstiltskin comes in offering an ultimatum. In addition, the writing flows as the reader follows the different events in the story. The writer uses transition words and phrases such as "At daybreak," and "again" to pace the story and help it flow. The final thing that I liked about the story was the elaborate illustration that brought a life-like property to the characters. The drawings were very detailed, even though they were not in color.… (mere)