It is often said that Oscar Wilde wrote The Happy Prince for his children, but I have my doubts. Wilde first told the story to a group of Cambridge students and read it to his son later, but rather than reaching out to children, the tale remains firmly entrenched in an embittered adult world.

In the story, a prince who turned a blind eye to the suffering of others during his lifetime is reborn as a statue in the centre of a city, where he cannot help but see the hardship all around him. He enlists the help of a sparrow to pick off his jewelled exterior in order to feed the poor and, over the course of their good works, prince and sparrow experience the power of love and sacrifice. When they have given everything, they die together in a moment of transcendence and are taken straight into heaven. There are flashes of wit and a guiding paradox, but on the whole, the tone is as leaden as the statue’s heart.

The pictures by Robin Muller present a bit of a mystery. There is excellent composition and detail in the Victorian city scenes, but the faces are unappealing. The yellowish palette may be partly the result of low production values, but it may also be that the illustrations are in synch with the story’s central paradox, which is that beauty can spring from the most unappealing elements in life. Whether children will appreciate this subtle complementarity of theme and image remains to be seen.