The Parrot is a retelling of an Italian folktale, adapted and gorgeously illustrated by the renowned Canadian illustrator Laszlo Gal and his daughter Raffaella. The Gals respond to the structure of the story – a tale within a tale – by imaginatively combining uncoloured pencil drawings with richly coloured egg tempera and oil paintings, thus suggesting the two different story worlds that the book takes us into. In both stories, a beautiful girl is desired by an evil king, who threatens but ultimately can’t prevent her marriage to a young prince. In the framing story, the girl remains oblivious to the threat, as she is absorbed in the story being told her by a wonderful parrot. The parrot is actually the good prince, who has so transformed himself in order to gain and hold her attention. The girl keeps her door locked against the king’s soldiers so as not to disrupt the storytelling. In the parrot’s tale, the girl takes a more active role, by searching for her kidnapped father, fending for herself in the woods, and eventually bringing about the rescue and restoration of the lovesick prince, who lies on his bed in a Snow White-like trance until the princess intervenes. This element of the book should allay concerns about the passivity of folktale heroines.

The real star of The Parrot, however, is neither prince nor princess but the art of storytelling. The Gals celebrate the power of a good story to grip its hearers, to warn them of evil in the world, and to bring delight: when the girl learns that her parrot is really a prince who wants to marry her, she immediately agrees because he has proven himself such a wonderful storyteller. Many imaginative techniques are used in the illustrations and book design to enhance the sense of moving in and out of the two worlds of the stories. For example, a colour wash or plain white wash is used for the background of the text, and the brilliantly hued parrot bridges the margin and the picture on each page when he is telling his story. The changing details of the design invite the young reader’s attention, and the use of colour beautifully suggests the transformative power of imagination and love.