Roman candles
The third of M. Sasek's picture-books about capital cities...is a little more formal than the others -- there is the smallest breath of the guide book about it -- but it has the sharp, simple sophisitication which is this distinguished artist's characteristic manner. In spite of mannerisms, his is a refreshing, gay approach, and he gives children a picture of a great living city, a great museum certainly but also a home for ordinary people....He has a feeling too for the absurdities as well as the splendours of the city.
Mr. Sasek's method is to show Rome as the visitor sees her, not tidily in an itinerary which takes the famous sites and buildings in their proper sequence but in a happy muddle of statues, museums, restaurants, churches, motor-cars, ruins. The drawing is most beautiful -- and beautifully reproduced --with a particularly sensitive feeling for building; it is, however, essentially artful art. The book may seem to appeal to very small children, but it is designed for the sophisticated reader who will enjoy the incongruous contrasts and who will not be puzzled by the abrupt -- and unexplained -- turns of the text. The book is full of unanswered questions. Why does the Villa Medici belong to France? What are "Carabinieri", police or military? What was [English poet John] Keats doing in Rome? Older boys and girls will know the answers, or where to find them; younger children attracted to the book by its gay colour and many pictures will be merely baffled.
Sophisticated readers will enjoy not only the brilliant draughtsmanship and the warm comedy but also the fine economy with which Mr. Sasek uses words. He employs no tricks but colours the plainest statement with his own wry humour.
Roman Candles, in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3038, May 20, 1960, p. xxi.
