Christiane M. Andrews's "Spindlefish and Stars," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Spindlefish and Stars by Christiane M. Andrews.

The entry begins:

Inspired by Greek mythology, Spindlefish and Stars tells the story of a girl named Clothilde who goes in search of her missing father. Taking the ticket of “half-paffage” he left for her, she journeys across the sea and finds herself trapped on small gray island inhabited only by ancient, creaking fisherman, a piggish cat, a moon-cheeked boy named Cary, and an apple-faced old woman who locks Clo away. Though Clo is desperate to escape the island and the old woman—who sits weaving an enormous gray tapestry day after day—she soon begins to realize that the island may be the only place she can truly help her father, as well as all those she left behind.

Many of the characters of Spindlefish and Stars are meant to appear as not exactly human. The islanders, especially, have attributes that suggest they’ve been crafted out of objects: the old woman’s face is “shriveled and shapeless as a dried apple”; others look like “misshapen lumps of clay” or have skin of parchment. Even Clo’s father, who is very much of the “real world,” should not seem realistic, as he has aged in an impossibly rapid way.

The island also has many fantastical elements, in particular the fishing grotto Clo chances upon, as well as the tapestry that she will eventually discover is not, in fact, gray at all. For this reason, I think Spindlefish and Stars would work best as an animated film, perhaps something like one of the stop-motion films by Henry Selick (or, just generally, the Laika studio), or as a film that...[read on]

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My Book, The Movie: Spindlefish and Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue