The illustrations are worth looking at though the artist never actually observed a woman spinning, but the story is a bit flat and if it echos with Irish legend that isn't conveyed in the language. ( )

An imaginative tale about two siblings, Finn and Cara who drift away from the shore toward the prohibited fog island. As night falls, the siblings are forced to sleep on the island where they meet the “fog man”. In the beginning the book seemed a little strange, but as I continued to read I thought it was a really good book. ( )

I picked this up because it is on the "Best of 2013" Publisher's Weekly list. I do not quite understand how it made the list. I was intrigued by the mood of the story, and it felt a little bit Irish-inspired. But the pictures were honestly a bit creepy, and the story was just weird (and I'm usually pretty okay with a strange story). Hmmm. Maybe I'm wrong? ( )

Set on Ireland's rocky west coast, this recent picture-book from Tomi Ungerer is the story of siblings Finn and Cara, the children of a local fisherman and boat-builder who get blown off course while out in their currach, and land on the mysterious and much feared Fog Island. Here they meet the Fog Man, an ancient islander who creates the fog in his enormous, well-like boiler, and who gives the children shelter for the night. Awakening the next day, the children discover themselves in an old ruin, with no sign of their host. They make their way home through a storm, but their story is met with disbelief, when they finally make land. Did they dream the Fog Man? The answer comes unexpectedly in the form of a long hair in their soup...

Originally published in Switzerland as Der Nebelmann, this recent (2012) story from Tomi Ungerer was conceived as a tribute to Ireland, where the French author/artist makes his home for part of the year. It references an Ireland of the past, both in story and artwork, the sort of quasi-legendary "islander" Ireland found in the children's fiction of such authors as Walter Macken or Eilís Dillon. Fog Island itself, with its steep stairs, and its stone building (later revealed as a ruin) at the summit, reminded me of Skellig Michael, an island off the coast of Kerry's Iveragh Peninsula, which was home to a sixth-century monastery. I appreciated the fantastic approach Ungerer takes in his tale, both because it invests the ruined monastery on Skellig Michael with a magical back-story, and because it seems to reference the tale-type, so common in Irish folklore, of someone who experiences a night-time brush with the creatures of the other world (usually fairies), but wakes in the day to find that what he took for a fairy-fort is actually a hill, or a ruin. Recommended to Tomi Ungerer fans, to anyone looking for original fairy-tales in picture-books form, and to anyone looking for children's stories set in Ireland. ( )

None of us liked it. I picked it up because the cover image is so striking, and I'd just been saying I'd like to live on a cool, damp, northen island. But I didn't like the illustrations, I wasn't at all sure whether this was supposed to be set in the present or some former, folksyier time, and some elements really bothered us. Seeing a guy holding a rabbit by it's ears? Bad boy! Rabbits are pets to us, not food so much. The fog creation with the sciency explanation? No, no, no, no, no. And the hair in the soup? Gag me with a spoon.

One of the very few impulse-check-outs that both the girls and I agree was utterly unappealing and vaguely disturbing in a bad way.

Library copy. ( )