The True Tale of a Giantess: The Story of Anna Swan by Anna Renaud (review)

In this Canadian picture book, nineteenth-century farm girl and sideshow performer Anna Swan supplies the fictionalized narration of her own life. From her childhood in Nova Scotia, where the oversized tyke was the subject of gossip by neighbors and adoration by her family ("'All the more to love,' cooed my parents") to her years with P. T. Barnum's Gallery of Wonders ("I dream of a life of travel and adventure. No matter how scary, I need a way to fit"), Swan's responses and decisions are treated by Renaud with imagination and respect. Her celebrated visit with Queen Victoria and her marriage to Martin Van Buren Bates, known as the "Kentucky Mountain Giant," are told with quiet pride, and her setting up a household in Ohio with her husband ("tall at the front for Martin and me, and short at the back for friends and family") testifies to her considerable success at leading a life in which largeness of heart counted for as much as height. Lafrance's softly tinted mixed-media artwork highlights the challenges Swan faced interacting in a world that operates at a different scale, and Swan's dignity consistently shines through. A closing note addresses a probable physiological cause for Swan's gigantism and extends information about her later years. Four period photographs and Renaud's resources are also appended. EB