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Summary
Summary
Parents and children love to play "question" games: Would you eat spaghetti made with gummy worms? Would you wear your clothes backwards all day? Sometimes the answer is "yes" and sometimes it's "no"--but the fun is in the asking. Gifted writer and educator Esme Raji Codell has writtten a book that incorporates fractured fairy tales with this kind of parent-child interplay to create a pitch-perfect combination of bedtime read-aloud and fairytales that will delight children and parents!
Author Notes
Esmé Raji Codell is the author of the bestselling Educating Esme , a memoir about her first year teaching in Chicago, as well as several books for children, including Sahara Special and Seed by Seed . You can visit her at PlanetEsme.Blogspot.com.
Elisa Chavarri is an illustrator and artist working from Alpena Michigan where she lives with her brave husband Matt, sweet daughter Lucia, crazy cat Tibbs, and silly dog Pancho. Elisa attended Savannah College of Art and Design where she earned a degree in Animation. She is a native of Lima, Peru. You can visit her at ElisaChavarri.com.
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-Bedtime stories take a twist in this attempt to shake up traditional tales. When a child says "no" to bedtime, fairy tales are offered in order to encourage sleep. Each tale is condensed into three familiar elements from the story ("Bread crumbs? Yes./Gingerbread? Yes./Witch? Yes.") and then a fourth term that is obviously not original to the story ("Pinata? NOOOOO!" says the child). The turn of the page suggests a "Well, maybe" scenario. Unfortunately, the tales are most often not "laugh-out-loud" as promised by the book jacket, but rather border on the absurd. For example, when Cinderella is presented as "Fairy godmother? Yes./Pumpkin coach? Yes./Glass slipper? Yes./Disco ball? NOOOOO!," the spread that follows features Cinderella with her John Travolta-clone Prince Charming dancing under the disco ball. The digital illustrations have some charm but hold little appeal for young children. Some terms, such as "solar panels" on the three pigs' house, will require explanation, and the conceit works best with youngsters already familiar with the stories. As an original approach to fairy tales, this one fairly misses the mark.-C. J. Connor, Campbell County Public Library, Cold Spring, KY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A small boy isn't quite ready for bed, so his mother runs through six familiar fairy tales in checklist form. The Three Little Pigs is boiled down to "Sticks?" "Yes." "Straw?" "Yes." "Bricks?" "Yes." "Solar panels?" "Nooooo!" Rushing through the bedtime canon isn't a new idea, but Codell (Sahara Special) and Chavarri (Santa Goes Green) add a twist: Mom can't resist wrapping up each story with an off-kilter nod to contemporary culture. Thus, the pigs' brick house gains solar panels and a surrounding community that looks like hipster Brooklyn, while Cinderella and the prince dance underneath a disco ball, with wardrobes straight out of Saturday Night Fever. Chavarri renders the traditional fairy tale elements in tidy, pretty spot illustrations, and the modern-day variations in freewheeling, comically detailed spreads (Red Riding Hood gets her nails done at a salon, while the woodsman gives one wolf a shampoo). Although it's unlikely that Mom's raucous and silly improvisations would have such a soporific effect in real life, the boy's repeated protestations should ring true for those who demand their stories be told the "right" way. Ages 4-8. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.