Viorica Tomescu

Published in 1977 in Bucharest, this picture-book collection contains twenty-three Romanian nursery rhymes / children's poems from author Viorica Tomescu and illustrator Ileana Ceausu-Pandele. Each brief selection describes either a moment in a child's life - a little girl making tea for her doll in A Thoughtful Mummy, a boy finding a kitten snoozing in his snow boot, in Snow Bootie - or the somewhat anthropomorphic actions of an animal in the home or in the wild. A feline spins yarn in Pussy-Cat the Spinner, some bears put away jam for the winter in Wintering, a group of ants build houses for themselves in The Diligent Mites, and so on...

I had never heard of Tomescu or Ceausu-Pandele before stumbling across The Tales of a Furry Friend on the Internet Archive, while searching for books by the Romanian author Ion Creangă. It turned up in a search because the book was published by the Ion Creangă Publishing house, and seeing that it was a translation of a Romanian children's book, and wanting to read more from that country, I added it to my shelves. All in all, I found it more appealing from a visual perspective, than a textual one. The poems were sweet, but mostly forgettable, and I had to reread more than one of them, after getting to the end and realizing I had become so disinterested that I hadn't a clue what I had just read. One or two sparked an interest - my favorite of the lot was The Granddaughters, about an apple tree who welcomes his yearly blossoms, thinking of them as granddaughters bearing gifts - but for the most part I was unimpressed. Some of this is undoubtedly owing to translation - poetry can be very difficult in this regard - but if I were judging on text alone, this would have gotten two stars. The additional star is for the vintage-style artwork, which was often quite lovely, utilizing a soft-edged style that felt very old-fashioned (in a good way), and a beautiful color palette. I'm not really sure to whom I would recommend this one - perhaps readers interested in Romanian children's books? Or perhaps those who enjoy vintage picture-book art.… (más)