Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
Fairy Tale Comics, edited by Chris Duffy (First Second, 2013) collects a variety of drawing styles and author’s voices into this anthology of 17 different favorite fairy tales. Most of the tales are retellings that young children will be familiar with. A few are more unfamiliar, coming from traditions other than the Brothers Grimm. This
I love retellings of traditional stories because I can often recognize familiar characters and storylines, but sometimes these stereotypes from our childhood are drastically turned on their heads. This is the case in Red: The (Fairly) True Tale of Red Riding Hood, by Liesl Shurtliff (Yearling, 2017). While we think we know the story of
Peek Inside a Fairy Tale: Little Red Riding Hood is an Usborne book board book with a few flaps and peek inside pages. You can see the next scene from the current scene. It is a really nice quality board book and the pictures are lots of fun. My daughter enjoyed the fact that she could see the
Super Red Riding Hood by Claudia Dávila (Kids Can Press, August 2014) is a twist on the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, with an emphasis on the super powers of Ruby, a girl who has no fear … or does she? With delightful cartoon-like and friendly illustrations, Ruby’s story shows us that sometimes our
Friday nights are “fun night” for our family. Usually, this means we watch a family/kid friendly movie. Recently, now that Raisin is five, we’re branching out to board games. (When the favorite board game was Candy Land, I really did not like that option every week.) Today, Raisin requested that we read books together. Yes,
I love reading my son fairy tales. I particularly love fairy tales retold. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszkca (1989) was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. I love hearing a familiar story from some other characters point of view! Also, my own son has gone through
First quarter 2012 has been spare on the blogging front, but it’s been busy and delightful on the home front from my perspective! Strawberry is now five weeks old, and Raisin and I are starting to settle in to a routine again of reading picture books. I’m reading Strawberry The Secret Garden aloud, and occasionally
Delia has recently been orphaned and finds herself among a truly odd assortment of characters when she arrives at Oddfellow Bluebeard’s orphanage. Each child at Oddfellow’s Orphange has something that sets them apart from the others, from the boy with an onion head, to the girl with blue tattoos all over her body, to a
Time is running out this year, so some of my categories for my discussion of the Cybils awards may seem a bit of a stretch. The fairy tales books I share about below are quite different from the folkloric books I also share about. Nevertheless, despite the slightly messy attempts at categorization, I have enjoyed
Previously by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Bruce Ingman is a different type of fairy tale. It goes backwards, showing that each nursery rhyme or fairy tale characters came from somewhere else. showing the effect of the action before showing the action. It begins, for example, with Goldilocks: Goldilocks arrived home all bothered and hot. And
I’ve found that these retellings are more fun to read, sometimes, than the original. It goes to show that if you want your fairy tale picture book to stand out, you have to do something different to the story. Stay tuned! Once I’m done talking books, Raisin has a puppet show for you! Which picture
The story of Goldilocks and her visit to an unoccupied house of three bears has inspired a plethora of picture books, retellings, and rewritten accounts of the story. Robert Southey first recorded the folkloric story in an 1834 collection. (See Wikipedia for a rundown of the story’s history and reincarnations). As I mentioned when I
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