This traditional fantasy is a fairy tale about a witch who turns into an owl at night. She turns males into statues that can not speak until she breaks the spell. She also turns females into birds and puts them into wicker cages. Jorinda, a beautiful maiden is in love with Joringel a handsome youth. They become lost in the woods where the witch puts a spell on them. Joringel is unable to help his love until he has a dream about a special flower that has a pearl in the middle and this flower breaks the spell of the witch. Joringel finds the cage with his Jorinda. He sets her free. He sees all the other birds who were trapped and sets them free too.
This book has a quality setting. It was originally from The Brothers Grimm. The pictures are beautiful watercolors. The witch looks dreadful. The characters are typical for a fairy tale about good verses evil. There are good descriptions of how ugly the witch was. The theme is love overcomes evil. I thought the plot could have been more developed.The flower dream was a little too easy for the conflict to resolve. He won over the witch fairly swiftly. It is a fairy tale after all.
I will not read the whole book to the class. I would use the setting as an example to show how a good setting has vivid imagery and sets the stage. In the classroom, I would copy the page where the setting is well written and have the students develop their own fairy tale ending. The character descriptions are also good examples. I would pull the descriptions out to show students how to develop characters. Then I would have them develop thier own fairy tale characters by first drawing a picture then use adjectives to describe them.