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Zelinsky's retelling of Rapunzel reaches back beyond the Grimms to a late-seventeenth-century French tale by Mlle. la Force, who based hers on the Neapolitan tale Petrosinella in a collection popular at the time. The artist understands the story's fundamentals to be about possessiveness, confinement, and separation, rather than about punishment and deprivation. Thus the tower the sorceress gives Rapunzel here is not a desolate, barren structure of denial but one of esoteric beauty on the outside and physical luxury within. And the world the artist creates through the elements in his paintings the palette, control of light, landscape, characters, architecture, interiors, costumes speaks to us not of an ugly witch who cruelly imprisons a beautiful young girl, but of a mother figure who powerfully resists her child's inevitable growth, and of a young woman and man who must struggle in the wilderness for the self-reliance that is the true beginning of their adulthood.

《风铃草姑娘》的故事有着令人惊叹的丰富历史。故事最初的源头已不可考，在长达数百年的流传过程中，曾在意大利、法国和德国出现过多个版本，其中最为著名的是《格林童话》中的《莴苣姑娘》（又名《长发姑娘》）。美国著名绘本大师泽林斯基在详细考察的基础上，撷取各个文本的精华，将美丽的风铃草作为长发姑娘的象征，用自己独特的视角重新阐释了这一古老的故事。书中的画面闪耀着温暖而柔和的金色光泽，人物形象立体丰满，构图均衡和谐，散发出典雅的韵味，让人想起拉斐尔、伦勃朗等文艺复兴大师的名画。作者凭借对人性的深刻把握，用细腻的笔触展现出了人物最为微妙的心理活动，将图像与文字完美地融为一体，使本书成为了童话绘本的典范之作。