Retold by Ashley Ramsden, illustrated by Ed Young,
Seven Fathers
Roaring Brook Press, 2011.

Age 4-8+

The talented award-winning illustrator Ed Young collaborated with renowned storyteller Ashley Ramsden to bring to life the Norwegian folk tale on which Seven Fathers is based. Young’s cut-paper collages, dusted with splatters of snow white and other colors on kraft paper backgrounds, create a powerfully evocative mood for Ramsden’s account of a traveler seeking refuge in the deep Scandinavian winter.

The traveler sees a light and approaches a house glowing through the heavy snow. He finds on the front porch “an old man busily chopping wood.” Young shows us only large fur-gloved mitts holding a marbled blue ax over a patchwork stump. The traveler asks, as he will again six more times in this story, if there is a room where he could spend the night. And the old man replies, in words that will again be repeated, “I’m not the father of the house.” He sends the traveler to the kitchen to an even older man, who repeats that he is “not the father of the house” either, and who sends the traveler to yet another father, in yet another room.

At last the traveler is sent to a father who lives “on the horn in the hall.” The horn, a cutout of an aerial view of suburban tract homes, holds a “little speck of dust.” On the dust is a pillow; on the pillow are two black dots that turn out to be tiny eyes. Finally the traveler is told by a little man in “a voice as tiny as a titmouse,” that, yes, there is a room for him. Magic happens then; at once a feast appears, and the seven fathers “now the size and age of the traveler himself and each wearing a crown upon his head,” watch as he eats his fill, then lay their crowns at his feet.

Who are these fathers, and why does this tale make such deep, resonant sense? That will be a wonderful question for young readers–and for the adults who are privileged to share this story with them–to discover as they ponder the mysteries, patterns and rhythms of this beautifully-told tale and the strong, sensitive images that illustrate it. Seven Fathers is a work of art to be treasured far beyond the age range its surface simplicity may suggest.

Charlotte Richardson
September 2011