It's worth reading and better than most children's fare, but Gypsy Rizka is not up to Alexander's usual high standards

The Gypsy girl Rizka is filled to the brim with troublemaking—no two ways about it. She and her friend/familiar/comrade-in-arms, the cat Petzel, live in an abandoned vardo on the outskirts of a hamlet called Greater Dunitsa. The children and the town blacksmith adore her, the city fathers can't stand her, but the townsfolk mostly accept her—while Rizka may have a reputation for mischief, she's a much better healer than Mr. Pugash, the town barber.

Generally, Rizka does well enough living by her wits, but the real thorn in her side is Chief Councilor Sharpnack, who would love nothing better than to see the Gypsy girl banished from Greater Dunitsa for life. Of course, Rizka won't be chased off as long as she has a reason to stay—she's waiting for her father and the other Gypsies to come and take her away—but in the meantime she keeps plenty busy matching up star-crossed lovers, discovering Ali Baba's cave, exorcising the town ghost and playing some well-deserved tricks on Sharpnack. When the Gypsies finally do return, though, Rizka must choose between two sets of people who claim her as one of their own.

Lloyd Alexander has earned his reputation as an excellent children's author. In Gypsy Rizka, he has clearly done his homework, drawing on a number of literary sources to create a new character that is nonetheless quite familiar. Rizka is the archetypal Wise Fool—she is a charming con artist, independent, bright and quick-witted; equal parts Shakespeare's Feste, European folk hero Tyl Ulenspiegel, Native American trickster Coyote, and Pippi Longstocking. Even her multi-patched coat is reminiscent of the early dress of Harlequin in Italian commedia dell'arte. Much of the tall-tale element figures in Rizka's many escapades: Petzel the cat is tried in court for stealing a chicken, there's a law passed that forbids people from insulting each other (with predictably disastrous results), the town's schoolmaster attempts to woo the seamstress from his homemade balloon.

There is a down side to Alexander's decision to draw on folk tales—the very familiarity of his source material works against him. Rizka and her friends may have been derived from many sources, but Alexander hasn't added enough uniqueness to make them anything more than symbolic stock characters—the Wise Fool, the Romantic Lovers, the Feuding Families, the Resident Lunatic, the Villain. Removing these characters to a vaguely Eastern European setting and giving them slightly unusual names isn't sufficient to rescue them from Cardboard Cutout Syndrome, and that's really a shame—particularly since I know Alexander is capable of better work. He's created witty, feisty, believable characters in his Prydain Chronicles, the Westmark trilogy and the Vesper Holly books, and I'd expected something similar from Gypsy Rizka. It never really materialized.

Gypsy Rizka is good, no doubt about it—Lloyd Alexander is no slouch in the writing department—but in comparison to some of his other tales, it does come up wanting. If you haven't already read some of his earlier books, I'd recommend you check them out first.

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