Grieving for her dead mother, little Elisabeth lets her tears fall into a well, where they stir the resident manlike monster to inarticulate sympathy; he steals her away to the well's depths to comfort her. Her father, trying to elicit help, inadvertently stirs up a posse of angry, uncontrollable villagers who manage to end the troll's life while retrieving the child-who nonetheless has responded to the monster's care and treasures his memory.

This purposeful allegory about overcoming grief is overearnest and self-consciously artful, though the artistry is fairly effective: the style is carefully crafted, and some of the poetic effects quite touching. Healy's vividly colored paintings are in a dreamlike, expressionistic style-like the text, often powerful but occasionally clumsy. A mixed but interesting effort. (Fiction. 8-12)

An intriguing fairy tale about a lonely child who escapes the prison of her grief through sympathy for another. When Elisabeth cries out for her dead mother at the Well of Despair, the hideous water troll who lives deep within its recesses takes pity on her. He steals her from bed in the hope of bringing her happiness, but Elisabeth is horrified when she awakens in the dark, damp well and tries to run away. Falling over a ledge, she is released from her spiritual captivity as she clings to the injured troll who saves her life. Meanwhile, her father, Peter, discovers mud and slime in Elizabeth's place. The prospect of a fulfilled relationship between father and daughter is finally realized when the heroic troll is killed by the fearful citizens of ancient Dorf. Skillfully crafted in the present tense, the spare narrative--part prose, part poetry--is dominated by the mythic elements of water, fire, earth, and air. The dreamlike tone of the writing is further mirrored in profuse surrealistic paintings in rich fairy colors of red and green. Like Sendak's works, this satisfying tale will touch the inner lives of its' young readers.

This fairy tale features a troll--not one of those plastic dolls with fat faces and colored hair that spikes up in a peak, but the sort of humpbacked monster who populates Scandinavian folklore and in Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" embodies the primitive urges of mankind. In "Elisabeth and the Water-Troll," Walter Wangerin Jr., the author of "The Book of the Dun Cow" and other admired children's books, does not protect his readers from the scary things they really enjoy. His fanged and furry troll lives in the dank blackness of a well, feared by the nearby villagers. But when a little girl comes to the well, crying in despair over the death of her mother, the troll feels a humanlike sympathy for her that forces him from his isolated life into the outside world. The troll takes Elisabeth from the village to live with him, and in a variation on Perrault's "Beauty and the Beast," their mutual pity quickly develops into love.

The villagers of Dorf don't do well in this fable. They are ignorant, impulsive, angry people whose conventional intolerance is in sharp contrast to the outcast troll, who dares to be human. Instead of asking the troll for Elisabeth's return, they believe the old rumors about the monster and instantly prepare for violent action against him--without regard for the girl's safety. Their blind fury ultimately results in the troll's destruction, but not before he has saved Elisabeth and convinced the girl that although her mother has gone, her father still lives to cherish and protect her.

In a short but moving epilogue, Elisabeth and her aged father drink at the well, nourished as much by the memory of the monster's good heart as by the chill water. Mr. Wangerin spells out his theme here at last: "They whisper to one another of this wonder, that ugliness can be so beautiful." What he has presented is a morality tale about appearance and reality.

As is appropriate for such a universal theme, the setting Mr. Wangerin has chosen is far away and long ago. Yet while the book focuses on events in a bucolic medieval world, Mr. Wangerin's language is lively--and precise, apt. Some of his images are reminiscent of the zestful ironies in James Thurber's novel for children and adults, "The Thirteen Clocks." There are many paradoxes and twists of perception: the dark underground becomes a sanctuary; the pretty village breeds hatred; a kidnapping brings peace of mind, and a rescue destroys it There are symbols here--green slime, teardrops, singing water, lizard shells, combs--but they are not so obtrusive that they demand study for the story to work. Magic is treated matter-of-factly by the people of Dorf, yet the working out of events depends solely on human behavior. The emotions of the story are rooted in the world we inhabit today.

The look of "Elisabeth and the Water-Troll" is most appealing. Deborah Healy's numerous full color illustrations effectively help to move the action along. The troll, with his whiskers, fangs, green skin and catlike eyes, is especially well done and reminded this reader of Jean Cocteau's imposing monster in his film version of "Beauty and the Beast." The use of a variety of typefaces adds a touch of liveliness to the book's appearance, underscoring the depiction of sounds and thoughts. The typography enhances the brisk narration of a fairy tale that tells all of us, adult and child, something we need to be reminded of continually: that what seems and what is are not always the same.