Puss in Boots Book

Although Fred Marcellino's illustrations are simply and utterly brilliant (lushly descriptive, authentically, historically 18th century French in style and movement, and more than well deserving of the Caldecott Honour Medal), I cannot say that I have ever really enjoyed Puss in Boots all that much as a tale, as a story. I have now read it in Perrault's French original, as well as in both German and English translation, and while I can appreciate the storyline to an extent, some parts have also always rubbed me the wrong proverbial way. Why for instance, would the Ogre's peasants, his serfs so to speak, automatically believe a passing cat's threats that he would have them killed if they did not tell the king that the fields belonged to the Marquis of Carabas, aka the Miller's son? And even with the king, I find it kind of hard to fathom that he would have simply accepted the Marquis of Carabas as an existing nobleman, as the king would of course and naturally know of and be familiar with his country's noblemen and women, especially someone as high born as a Marquis (but on the other hand, how the cat defeats the ogre is indeed priceless and hilarious, albeit also a tad predictable, and I do love the fact that once the miller's son has made his fortune, and marries the king's daughter, his helper, his feline companion, is not forgotten, but becomes a great lord in his own right).

Now I have been debating whether to rate Puss in Boots with three or four stars, and have finally decided on three stars. For although (thankfully) the original author and translator are indeed mentioned (Charles Perrault, Malcolm Arthur), the Puss in Boots tale actually has a rather interesting back-story, and a more detailed note on its genesis and history would increase the literary and folkloric value of the same. The Brothers Grimm included a Puss in Boots type of story in the first 1812 edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen but then removed it from subsequent editions as being not only "too French" but also supposedly "too literary" in scope, a salient point both interesting and also rather ironic, considering we now know that many of the Grimms' collected "German" folktales were actually gathered from friends and acquaintances of French Huguenot extraction, and that the Grimms' themselves relentlessly edited and stylised their folktales, so that by the 1857 edition, their collection of tales was actually in many ways considerably more literary than traditionally folkloric (all nuggets of knowledge that would and could be a great addition as an author's note in this otherwise excellent rendition of Charles Perrault's classic tale).