The Flying Bed (review)

Guido may be the son of a legendary Florentine baker, but he lacks his father's touch, so Guido and his wife, Maria, "earned scarcely enough money to live on." When a strapped Guido sells the couple's bed, Maria is so angry that he placates her by finding another bed, a beautifully carved piece that, according to the seller, "chooses its owners." It definitely has special properties: at night, it flies Guido and Maria to a mystical town where an otherworldly baker gives Guido a special yeast that brings magic to his baking and customers to his shop. Soon, though, Guido gets greedy and breaks the rules of the gift, ruining his business and leaving him so desperate that he threatens to chop up the magic bed for firewood—unless Maria and the bed can stop him. The story has touches of folkloric interest, and there's appeal to the notion of a flying bed that takes you magical places. Unfortunately, though, the lengthy text can't support the fairly scanty plot, and the elements don't cohere (the bed/bread connection is particularly tenuous); though the ending has symbolic value, readers will be frustrated that it fails to address the story's main problem. Thompson's paintings are at their best in the sweeping vistas of the sleeping city as the bed flies over it; their stiff and sometimes awkward photorealism makes human portraits stilted and ungainly, and their brassy corporeality bogs the story down further by making it mundane rather than ethereal. Despite the pleasing fantastical touches here, young readers will be better off with Willard's previous fancies, such as The Tale I Told Sasha (BCCB 7/99) or Shadow Story (11/99).