Caldecott Medal Contender: Snow White

by Sam Juliano

The Brothers Grimm meet film noir and the silent cinema’s German Expressionism in a dazzling graphic novel and gender bender titled Snow White by Matt Phelan.  Show business, the Ziegfeld Follies, and the onset of the Great Depression  after the thriving Roaring Twenties are woven into a wholly irresistible updating of the most beautiful girl in the land and her seven protectors that begins in Manhattan’s Central Park in the winter of 1918, less than a year after the end of the First World War.   Though the ink and watercolor paintings are wildly diverse and comic book in style the palette mixes sepia tone with conventional black and white, much like the silent cinema of the period.  The sparing use of red impacts the book’s themes dramatically, and when full color appears late in the book its use is celebratory.

Snow White’s opening, which segues into a nearly book-long flashback recalls two of film noir’s most iconic works, Robert Siodmak’s 1946 The Killers  and Billy Wilder’s 1950 Sunset Boulevard, when the leading men are either dead or will be killed within minutes, and the remainder of the films document how they came to be doomed.  The NYPD crime scene tape cordons off the area around a glass coffin, and investigators attempt to pry vital information from a gang of seven who resemble the Dead End kids.  After asking what is going on, and who is the victim, one boy welling up with tears is only able to offer up three words: White as snow.  

Phelan then whisks us back to 1918 where pink-cheeked mother and young daughter are frolicking in a snowy Central Park.  We learn the toddler is named Samantha White.  After the women informs the young one it is time to leave she coughs provocatively alerting her husband who is standing next to a horse-drawn sleigh.  After blood is found on her cloth and in the snow it is clear enough she is suffering from tuberculosis.  Despite the father’s assurances to the devastated daughter she succumbs to the illness, and matrons proceed to cover her with a blanket.    We move ahead to 1928 and the height of the Broadway Follies, and the Queen, whose rise the author describes as meteoric.  In one of the most stunning illustrations in the book she is seen in her staggering light green gown on stage, and Samantha’s father is hopelessly smitten.  Think of Emil Jannings’ schoolteacher when he first saw Lulu at the Kit Kat Club in Von Sternberg’s silent era Der Blau Engel.  Soon enough the inevitable happens when Papa White is ensnared by the cold, controlling and unscrupulous femme fatale, the literary equivalent of the cinema’s murderous Gene Tierney in John Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven.  A trunk is loaded and Samantha is sent off to boarding school.  While father and daughter embrace in several vignettes, the stepmother look on without an ounce of emotion.  The “Thud” crayoned across the door echos with finality.The ticker tape machine is introduced, and the father is more than surprised that his own coal and steel stocks continue to rise in value, even while the Great Depression is wrecking economic havoc on the nation.  He tells his wife that his survival during this crash may be attributed to something “like” luck, and the intimation is that some kind of sorcery is at play.  Then the ticking machine unveils further information, and all those familiar with the beloved Grimms fairy tale, the 1938 Disney classic and numerous other versions know well the ticker tape will let the vainest of narcissists know if she is or isn’t the fairest one in the land.  The ticking intensifies as Phelan ups the typographical ante.  By now young readers can identify this evil woman as the wicked stepmother of the original story as she proceeds to poison her husband, clearing the way to eliminate the only competitor to the “most beautiful of all” mantel.

An attorney, who is also the deceased man’s friend laments the sudden illness and passing and reads the stipulations of the will, which include that Samantha will receive three-quarters of his wealth upon her eighteenth birthday.  The wicked step-mom banishes Samantha to the guest room, and reads the latest ticker tape that advises boldly that there is only one answer to her dilemma:  Kill.  A man is hired to murder Samantha and as proof he must cut out her heart and bring it back as evidence.  In a marvelously brooding series of wordless drawings the pursuit of this would-be killer and Samantha is chronicled in a place called Hooverville, but as those familiar with Snow White know the man simply can’t go through with such a monstrous crime, especially since he is moved and impressed by the subject of his intended act.  He tells Samantha that her step-mom is all-knowing and powerful and that she must run away and hide.  The man secures a pig’s heart at a butcher.  Then in an action-packed chapter titled “Lost in the Alleys” Samantha initially fends off attackers but is finally rescued by a group of seven boys, who identify themselves only as the “seven”.    They become close friends, and the seven become committed to Snow White’s safety.

The blue tinted windows at Macy’s denotes a magical winter wonderland, but in the next chapter the evil step-mom’s gains revenge on the man who betrayed her, and tells her minions to remove his body.  The ticker again advises her to get rid of Snow White, and after she is appraised of her whereabouts she applies her makeup while behind her on a table lies a big read apple with a poisonous hypodermic needle next to it.  The boys – the modern equivalent of the seven dwarfs are uneasy when the object of their building adoration tells them she will be back soon.  As an aside she asks the boy who mirrors the dwarf “Bashful” what his name is but gets no response.  After she leaves and mixes in with street walkers she hears someone chanting “Apples for Sale.”  She spots and old woman sitting on a crate with a bushel of apples next to her.  The old woman convinces Snow White to take a bite of her special gift apple and the results cause her to stumble over, and simulate death.  The gang of seven return too late, though they chase the step-mom down streets, and into the theater, who she ascends to the roof, is electrified by a jolt and falls to her death.

In an effort to revive their beloved princess, the boys one by one divulge their names:  Bobby, Sam, Harry, Thomas, Arthur, Linus and Anthony.  They are all stunned and grief-stricken.  Snow White is placed in the glass coffin seen at the beginning of the book, and the seven becomes guardians of her remains.  All they can tell the officers is that she’s “White as snow.”  But one handsome detective is on to something.  He tells an officer “I’ve seen a lot of stiffs, McChesney” but “That’s not one of them.”  Phelan incorporates a soft pastel turquoise, as the story’s famed denouement approaches.  The detective enters the glass tomb and proceeds to kiss this unusually life-like cadaver and she is resurrected.  her and her prince exchange greetings as Linus triumphantly bangs on the glass.  The most all-encompassing color scheme of all is used for the final chapter when Snow White serves her previous protectors hand and foot.  The prince arrives at the door with a bouquet of flowers and marriage is imminent.

Snow White, with its terrific looking cover of a black apple on a red background is an illustrative tour de force, by a acclaimed master of the graphic novel.  In recent years we’ve had two books from this genre honored by the Caldecott committee.  The Invention of Hugo Cabret is also referred to as historical fiction, but still it has numerous graphic novel elements.  It won the 2007 Caldecott Medal.  Just two years ago the thematically unprecedented This One Summer captured a Caldecott Honor.  Phelan’s book is smart, evocative and entertaining, and the art throughout brilliantly sublime.  The committee should have no problem at all observing its supreme craftsmanship.

Note:  This is the nineteenth entry in the ongoing 2016 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The series does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include at least 30 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced on January 22nd, hence the reviews will continue till two days before that date.

Author-illustrator Matt Phelan