Reading Beauty by Deborah Underwood and Meg Hunt

Thanks to @kidlitexchange and Chronicle Kids for sharing Reading Beauty by Deborah Underwood and Meg Hunt. All opinions are my own. 

I love a good fairy tale retelling or fractured fairy tale, and this book delivers. Lex is a space princess who loves to read, but wakes up on her 15th birthday to find all her books missing! Her parents tell her that she was cursed at birth: she’d get a paper cut from a book and fall to sleep until her true love kisses her. They took away all her books to keep her safe. 

Lex takes things into her own hands and tracks down the fairy who cursed her. The solution to the curse AND to true love’s kids are both delightful twists that thankfully stay away from the “poor little princess” fairy tale. That, along with Lex being 15 years old, make this a picture book all ages can enjoy. I’m already thinking of ways to use it with my older elementary students for Picture Book Month in November. Check this out now so you can use it, too!

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

Plot Summary
Forget everything you think you know about the three little pigs - this is the real story! Alexander T. Wolf (you can call him Al) is tired of everyone thinking he’s a big bad wolf just because he likes to eat cute animals. The truth is, he just needed to borrow a cup of sugar. And since he had a cold, he decided to just walk over to his neighbor’s house. It’s not his fault his sneezes demolish houses - who builds out of straw and sticks? Al went from merely borrowing a cup of sugar to being jailed for “huffing and puffing” - proof that reporters always skew the story!

Critical Analysis
This book isn’t actually by Jon Scieszka, it’s by Alexander Wolf. And because this is his story, told from his point of view, he’s an unreliable narrator. He’s been know throughout history as the bad guy of the story, and even with justice insisting everyone is innocent until proven guilty, you’ll find A. Wolf a little hard to believe. Even so, the way he tells the story is very humorous and very childlike - making up reason after reason for why he did this, and then that, and how it got skewed. I think that is what makes it so appealing to children: the perfect combination of silliness and familiarity, told on their level.
     With a story told from the bad guy’s point of view, you can’t expect bright colors and smooth drawings! Lane Smith’s art fits The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs perfectly. The colors are mostly dark - maroons and burnt oranges, browns and tans. Each picture looks grainy, but on closer inspection, the marks are a lot of texture added to each drawing, like bumps on bricks, needles of hay, woodgrain on the chalkboard frame. The desaturated colors work well with the few samples of newsprint on the covers and at the end of the book. The illustrations seem a little dark for such a humorous story, but they are effective at setting the mood of an unreliable narrator trying to get you to believe his side of the story.
     Publishers Weekly praises the illustrations specifically, saying, “Smith’s highly imaginative watercolors eschew realism, further updating the tale, though some may find their urbane stylization and intentionally static quality mystifyingly adult.” School Library Journal also comments on the overall dark and shadowy drawings, saying, “[…] the bespectacled wolf moves with a rather sinister tonelessness, and his juicy sneezes tear like thunderbolts through a dim, grainy world.”

Personal Response
I loved this book as a child, and was thrilled to discover it’s just as funny now! I read it to my son - he’s only three months old, but so far all the fairy tales I’ve read to him have been fractured fairy tales! As an added bonus, we got to meet Jon Scieszka August 20, 2014 - he’s just as witty in person as in writing.
     I think it’s fun to read fractured fairy tales and compare them with the originals. This book is especially fun because the wolf seems sympathetic, wanting to bake a cake for his granny! It’s interesting to see who kids side with, since most know the other story of the three little pigs, and are now faced with looking at it from the bad guy’s point of view.

Reviews & Awards
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs is #35 on School Library Journal’s list “Top 100 Picture Books” of all time. In 2008, Scieszka was the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a position created to bring awareness to the importance of reading at a young age. He is also the founder of “Guys Read,” a nonprofit literacy organization. His book The Stinky Cheese Man won a Caldecott Honor medal. Lane Smith was the illustrator for that book, and has worked with Scieszka on The Time Warp Trio novels. Smith has collaborated with many other authors and won countless awards for his work, including the recent Caldecott honor Grandpa Green.

Connections & Activities
The scope of activities for this book seem endless, because it’s so inviting for children. They can make up their own fractured fairy tales. They can discuss whether they believe the wolf or not, and explain their reasonings why. They can (and should!) read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, also by Scieszka and Smith, and discuss the fractured fairy tales told there. As an extended study, students can read more books by the author and illustrator separately, and compare and contrast their works.

Read it for yourself!
Scieszka, Jon. 1989. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. Ill. by Lane Smith. New York: Puffin
     Books. ISBN 9780140544510

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

Plot Summary
Do you think you know all about the antics of Goldilocks? The three dinosaurs certainly think so. Papa Dinosaur, Mama Dinosaur, and no, not the Baby Dinosaur you might be expecting, but rather some other Dinosaur who happens to be visiting from Norway, decide to rig up their house so it is just so. They make it quite clear when they leave the house, but continually reassure everyone involved - readers included! - that they are not hiding in the woods, waiting for a trespasser. Goldilocks comes by the house and, true to her style, goes right in. She tries each pudding, then searches for a place to sit. It is then she realizes everything in this house is big. Much too big for bears. Will Goldilocks find out who lives in the house before they find her?

Critical Analysis
Mo Willems lets his fantastic sense of humor shine in this twist on a favorite fairy tale. He pulls the reader into the story with his simple, clean illustrations, and makes them comfortable by letting them in on the joke. Though I say his illustrations are “simple,” that doesn’t mean they’re lacking, simply that no page is too crammed with artistic elements. He outlines the characters with what looks like a black crayon, though the other colors are smooth and vibrant. He adds a bit of shadow to the characters, which helps them pop off the page. Willems shows some humor in his drawing style as well, by adding homages to his other works in the background of some scenes.
     Willems uses a gentle dose of anthropomorphism to make his dinosaurs more relatable to the reader, especially those who are already familiar with Goldilocks’ mischief. Throughout the book, the dinosaurs seem a little devious, setting traps for the little girl, but they also seem like creatures children would want to be friends with. Besides twisting the well-known fairy tale, Willems also turns it more into a fable by ending the story with morals (however questionable those may be…).

Personal Response
I was smiling as soon as I opened Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs and saw the endpapers, and was thrilled that Willems kept the humor going through the whole story. The illustrations looked like they could easily be animated into a cartoon - which is something I’d love to see! I really liked the wink-wink-nudge-nudge type of humor Willems employed in this book, and am curious to see if that’s his style in other books as well. I feel like it’s hard to mess up a fractured fairy tale because there’s so much freedom to make them silly, but Willems hit the nail on the head with this one. Though the jokes are over his head, I love that my 3-month-old son has only heard fractured fairy tales so far - none of the classics, all of the ridiculousness!

Reviews & Awards
In a starred review, School Library Journal notes, "This is pure Mo Willems, from the many visual gags in the cleanly drawn illustrations and the tight, tongue-in-cheek story line to the endpapers, decorated with dozens of hilarious crossed-out title possibilities." Many children's book are geared only towards children, and some have jokes aimed at the adults reading the story aloud. Willems, however, is a perfect mix of the middle ground, as the jokes can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. It might sound corny, but his books bring readers together by bridging the gap in ages.
     Awards and honors earned by Mo Willems’ Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs include: Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Books of 2012, Picture Books; School Library Journal Best Children’s Books 2012, Picture Books; 2013 Irma Black Award Finalist; Los Angeles Public Library Best of 2012 Children’s Books; ALSC 2013 Notable Children’s Books, Younger Readers; 2013 Sid Fleischman Humor Award Winner; IRA Children’s Choices, Beginning Readers, 2013.

Connections & Activities
Readers will love holding this book on their lap and turning the pages at their own pace, because there is much to be explored in each illustration. Because of the book’s whimsical sense of humor, it inspires lots of fun activities.
     - Find the references to Willems’ other works within the illustrations. If the reader doesn’t know any of his other books, it’s a good opportunity to make them eager to read more!
     - Pause after each page and ask what might happen next. Children who know the more traditional version of Goldilocks might be surprised at the turn of events in this version!
     - The endpapers show that Willems went through quite a few ideas before settling on dinosaurs. Examples include Goldilocks and the Three Naked Mole Rats or Goldilocks and the Three-Piece Band. Have the readers pick a few of their favorites and brainstorm about how that version of the story might go! If time allows, you can expand this project into a storytelling event, or have the children draw the characters for their own book.

Read it for yourself!
Willems, Mo. 2012. Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. New York: Balzer + Bray. ISBN
     9780062104182