The Chinese Emperor's New Clothes

K-Gr 3--The emperor in Compestine's version of this well-known tale is a child who's been stymied in his intentions to do right by his subjects because the adult ministers who surround him are corrupt. The emperor enlists the cooperation of the court tailors in revealing the ministers' perfidy, dressing them in burlap to parade the streets for Chinese New Year. The ministers must pretend to believe they are clothed in opulent silks to hide their dishonesty and, as in Andersen's original story; the truth is made known by a little boy watching the parade. Compestine's prose is adequate for her purposes wherein responsible leadership and honesty receive their due recognition, but it is Roberts's watercolor, pen-and-ink illustrations that lift the book above the commonplace. He often incorporates Chinese latticework screens to frame the action and uses Chinese textile motifs, headdresses, and hair styles to ground the drawings in the culture. A mouse and a cricket make frequent appearances to delight observant readers and listeners. The dragon dancers parade through a multicultural crowd in an interesting variety of costumes (presumably their new best clothes for the holiday celebration). Each of Roberts's images adds pleasure to a tale that might otherwise have seemed overly preachy. VERDICT A variant of an oft-told classic that is suitable for classroom and individual reading.--Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY

Compestine (Secrets of the Terra-Cotta Soldier) offers her retelling as a corrective to Hans Christian Andersen's account. "The truth is that the story took place here in China, and without any tricky tailors," she writes, promising to reveal the "real story." In this version, the child emperor's ministers take advantage of Ming Da's youth to plunder the treasury, which he wants to use to feed the poor. The plan to make modest clothing belongs to the young emperor: he enlists the help of his tailors to dress him in rice sacks. "Honest people will see their true splendor," he explains to the ministers, whose vanity, of course, gets the better of them. Roberts (The Prince and the Porker) has marvelous fun with the details of the Chinese court, rendering the robes, hats, and architectural flourishes of the palace with wit and style. The hero of the original tale was a child, too--but in this version he's the author of the plan and the focus of the action, and the story is the better for it. Ages 6-9. (Jan.)