These can be stored in an accompanying pocket when not in use-or even dispensed with entirely, as the castle is not only festooned with busy guards and other residents, but there is lots of (literal) monkey business going on. The card-stock punch-outs include four characters in period dress, two rideable destriers and, oddly, a cannon. The dramatic main event follows a perfunctory scenario in which Maisy welcomes “Sir Charley” the crocodile and others to a bit of archery practice, then dons armor to win a friendly joust “by one point.” Even toddlers-at-arms (with minimal assistance from a yeoparent) can follow the easy instructions to set up the castle and brace it. This reimagined telling has an engaging charm that rings true.Ī relatively sturdy pullout castle with a die-cut drawbridge and a dragon in the cellar serves as playscape for punch-out figures of medieval Maisy and her friends. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.5-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 23% of actual size.) The doll’s adventures look a little sweeter, with more red and blue added to the brown palette of the German scenes.
The stylized illustrations, especially those set in the chilly Berlin fall, resemble woodcuts with a German expressionist look. Realizing that an adult can care so much about a child met in the park is empowering. While kids may not care about Kafka, the short relationship between the writer and the little girl will keep their interest. Irma gets the message that she can do anything, and the final image shows her riding a camel, a copy of Metamorphosis peeking from a satchel. Theule instead opts to send the doll on an Antarctic expedition. In an author’s note, readers learn that Kafka chose to write that Soupsy was getting married. Unfortunately, as the letters increase in excitement, Kafka’s health declines (he would die of tuberculosis in June 1924), and he must find a way to end Soupsy’s adventures in a positive way.
The real letters and the girl’s identity have been lost to history the invented letters describe a dazzling variety of adventures for Soupsy. Theule follows the outline of the account: When Kafka meets an unhappy girl in a Berlin park in 1923 and learns her doll is lost, Kafka writes a series of letters from Soupsy, the doll, to Irma, the girl. An imagining of an unlikely real-life episode in the life of absurdist Franz Kafka.
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