Shrek!
| Children's book | |
|---|---|
| title | Shrek! |
| author | William Steig |
| illustrator | William Steig |
| publishing company | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| First publication | 1990 |
Shrek! is a picture book by the American cartoonist and children's author William Steig , published in 1990 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux . The German translation of the book was published in 1991 by Gerstenberg Verlag . The children's book served as the basis for the 2001 film Shrek - The daredevil hero and the film series that followed.
content
Shrek is an ugly young ogre who is sent into the world by his parents to cause damage and to frighten people. Shrek lives up to his role as a harmful ogre, and even a snake foolish enough to bite him would convulsively and die on the spot. Along the way, through a witch's prophecy, he learns of an even uglier ogre woman whom he is looking for in order to marry her. A knight who stands in his way is breathed in by Shrek's fiery breath and sunk into the moat with glowing armor. His minstrel "Your rosy pimples, the warty calluses, and how your pig's eyes squint at me, that makes me very stupid!" Convinces the ogre woman and so they are married. The book closes with the modified fairy tale formula that they live together to the end and frighten anyone who comes in their way.
Emergence
William Steig created Shrek! 1990 at the age of 83. His son, the jazz flutist Jeremy Steig , had introduced him to the advantages of improvising, which is why the drawings were drawn directly with ink and colored with watercolors without a sketch. The resulting crackling was heightened by making individual drawings with his eyes closed or with his left hand. Through this craziness, the style approximates the drawings of children in order to encourage them to help create through this apparent “incompletion”.
The exploitation rights for the character Shrek were acquired by DreamWorks Animation for the Shrek film series. Steig received the sum of US $ 500,000 for this.
reception
Shrek! received positive reviews in various review media, including the library journals Publishers Weekly and the School Library Journal, as well as daily newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post . From Publishers Weekly and the School Library Journal was Shrek! awarded as the best children's book of the year.
The book gained greater fame through the Shrek film series, in which the main character was smoothed both visually and characteristically. Visually, both the hair and the warts were removed and the claws gave way to human fingernails. Shrek's originally anarchic character has been remodeled into a thoughtful and romantic character who suffers from his ugliness rather than embracing and enjoying it like the Shrek of the children's book.
According to the literary scholar Brigitte Frizzoni, Shrek! as well as the cinematic implementation in the genre of the fairy tale parody . In contrast to the films, however, there are no parodic allusions to the media industry in the book.
proof
- ↑ a b Book presentation ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Shrek! in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Book preview ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.4 MB)
- ↑ a b Stephan Maus: "Shrek the Third": Flegeljahre eines Monster ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: stern 26, 2007.
- ↑ Brigitte Frizzoni: "Shrek" - a postmodern fairy tale . In: Christoph Schmitt: Narrative Cultures in Media Change (Volume 3 of Rostock Contributions to Folklore and Cultural History). Waxmann, Münster 2008. ISBN 3-8309-1564-0 . Pp. 187-202.
