Skip to product information
1 of 5

Elsewhere Editions

Meeselphe

Meeselphe

by Claude Ponti, translated from French by Alyson Waters & Margot Kerlidou

Regular price $20.00
Regular price $0.00 Sale price $20.00
Format

Leaning out of her treehouse window, Meeselphe wonders what it’s like way down on the ground, a place she’s never been – but she’s certain there are many unfamiliar, delightful, and curious things to discover. So she jumps! Landing on the forest floor and striding fearlessly into the wackanana landscape of chocolate rabbits and Penrose quinces beyond, bristly-haired Meeselphe encounters friends and feckless foes. Malivicious monsters stand in her way and nothing is as it seems in this whimsical and sometimes unfriendly world, but Meeselphe isn’t fazed: she has an answer for every riddle and a red paintbrush for every self-conscious ladybug. In the final showdown, scheduled for pages 38 and 39, our bushy-haired heroine makes a triumphant stand against the malivicious monsters. In detailed illustrations and Claude Ponti’s trademark wordplay, cleverly rendered in this inventive translation by Alyson Waters and Margot Kerlidou, young readers will experience the thrill of adventure and the pleasure of coming home again.

Additional Book Information

Series: Elsewhere Editions
ISBN: 9781953861764
Pages: 48
Publication Date:

Praise

When [Meeselphe] leaves her house-tree one day to explore a phantasmagorical landscape portrayed in sprightly, clear lines, she befriends a “sadbandoned” baby bird and coolly answers riddles posed by a series of blobby monsters . . . Waters and Kerlidou deal creatively with puns and invented words (“confusifying”) in this surrealist excursion that builds . . . to a final triumphant showdown.
Publishers Weekly

What a weird and wonderful book! I loved the illustrations and the wordplay, the humor and the completely unflappable Meeselphe. We should all be so calm in the face of All Devourful creatures who insult our haircuts.
—Beth Pierson, White Lake Community Library

View full details
  • Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a New York Review Books Gift Card.

    Gift Cards 
  • A membership for yourself or as a gift for a special reader will promise a year of good reading.

    Join NYRB Classics Book Club 
  • Is there a book that you’d like to see back in print, or that you think we should consider for one of our series? Let us know!

    Tell us about it