THE WICKED FAIRY-WIFE: A FRENCH-CANADIAN FOLKTALE Mary Alice Downie. Illustrated by Kirn Price. Toronto, Kids Can Press, c1983. unpaged, paper, $5.95. ISBN 0-919964-53-2. Grades K-3. Reviewed by Ron Jobe. Volume 12 Number 3 1984 May "Marry me or I'll strangle you!" A Canadian tale of evil, hate, and jealousy. Hideously ugly, a wicked witch forces a newly-married prince to get rid of his young wife, Josette, and marry her. Josette is sentenced to be hanged; however, the hangman resists and just plucks her eyes out before releasing her to stumble into a forest. Fortunately, she is taken in by a friendly woodchopper and his wife. Years later, Josette's son returns to the palace as a servant to seek revenge on the wicked woman. The stark retelling of this French Canadian folktale has a clipped sense of brutality in its terse style. The grotesque ink sketches exude a static quality that freezes the expression of each character into nightmarish images. Each scene presents a horrifying interpretation of the text, one that makes the tale appear even more gruesome. "Marry me or I'll strangle you!" Do children really need such frightening tales as this one? Ron Jobe, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.