The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Joseph Jones is a reference librarian in the Koerner Library at the
University of British Columbia.

Robin Muller’s version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice consists of 14 full-page illustrations in color, each paired with a page of text at the left. The volume is pleasing in every aspect of its production: binding, quality and weight of paper, layout, choice and size of type face, and fidelity of line and color in illustration. The only apparent flaw is one misspelling, “hembane” on page 22.

The story itself, according to the publisher’s press release, is adapted from a ballad of Goethe. However, only one small and substantially altered incident is derived from the ballad: the apprentice’s chores being magically performed by a dove. Much more clearly a source, and a very different story, is Wanda Gag’s version in More Tales from Grimm (Coward-McCann, 1947). What Muller has added to this amounts to a second plot: a captive dove who is a transformed princess, an endangered kingdom to which the princess is heir, and the victory of the dove/princess and the apprentice over the sorcerer.

Muller’s telling of the story probably is longer and more complicated than any other. The book is just within the limits of a bedtime reading, and the scams that join the narrative pieces suit the pattern of the whole. The inventiveness of the author, however, does risk overwhelming the magic inherent in the tale.

The complications of the plot find expression in a style that aims at an unsustainable intensity. A few phrases will indicate the kind of overwriting that results: “tormented it cruelly,” “shivered with fear,” “gasped with horror,” “terrible fury,” “powerful incantation.”

The illustrations are well matched to the text. The best of them have a balance and simplicity that are natural to the world depicted: the apprentice in the wood, the stair to the top of the tower, the account of the lost heir (with a wolf cleverly shadowed on the floor by the drapery), and the transformation of the dove into a princess. In other illustrations detail is multiplied to the point of clutter, adding nothing to mystery or enchantment.

Muller’s story and pictures owe their effect to fundamental elements of plot and design. Unnecessary complication and elaboration of those elements has served only to weaken that effect.