Eliza and her eleven elder brothers lived happily with their mother and father, the king and queen of a little kingdom beside a forest, until the day that the queen died. Grief-stricken for some time, the king eventually remarried, taking as his bride the daughter of the strange forest-woman he encountered while out hunting. Not sure that he could trust this new wife, he kept his children a secret, hiding them away in a tower guarded by a great maze. This action had terrible consequences, leading to jealousy, hurt, and eventually, a terrible curse that transformed the eleven brothers into swans. Would Eliza, now left alone, find a way to track down her brothers, and if she did, could she find a way to free them from the curse...?

Like her East of the Sun, West of the Moon, British author/illustrator Jackie Morris certainly knows how to pick some of my favorite fairy-tales for her novelized retellings! I have always loved this story, and in Morris' hands it comes alive. Unlike the earlier book, whose altered ending struck me as ill-advised, here I thought the additions to the tale were fitting, and well done. I liked the fact that Morris gave the second queen a believable motive for her actions, other than the stereotypical step-motherly evil so often seen. There is a real feeling of tragedy here, and of missed opportunity, and while the figure of the second queen isn't redeemed - it is still evil to take one's anger out on children, because of what their parent has done, regardless of one's feelings - the reader can at least sympathize. The illustrations, as could be expected, were simply lovely, capturing the avian charm of the swan brothers, and the canine devotion of Eliza's dog Shadow. Recommended to anyone who enjoyed novelized fairy-tale retellings, as well as to fans of Jackie Morris and her artwork. ( )

Exquisite illustrations and a lyrical re-telling of the fairy tale. As a birder, I love Jackie's attention to detail in naming specific species, such as the "tiny goldcrests who seemed to throw their small bright bodies through twisted hedges rather than fly." The watercolors are achingly beautiful, just as is the story of the eleven brothers turned to swans by the jealous stepmother and the sister who must knit shirts of nettles to restore her brothers. Morris adds depth to her version of the classic tale by creating is a stepmother who is not just an evil queen. The reader understands the second wife's jealousy as the king fails to share his first wife's family with her. This is a book to re-read periodically and gain new insights at different times of one's life. ( )