Newfangled Fairy Tales, Book No. 1 - Softcover

Bruce Lansky, the creator of this series and author of the story "Princess and the Pea" is also the creator and editor of the Girls to the Rescue series and the Can You Solve the Mysteries series. He is also a best-selling children's poet. His poetry anthologies include No More Homework! No More Tests! and Rolling in the Aisles.

Gr. 3^-5, younger for reading aloud. After being cooped up in that castle for a hundred years, Sleeping Beauty thinks she'll take the summer off and backpack through Europe. King Midas is a workaholic banker who neglects his family. Cinderella is a chamber maid who meets the fairy godmother (in drag) when coming out to dump the trash. Fractured fairy tales are now an established genre in picture books. This small paperback anthology is for middle-grade readers who know the traditional stories and can appreciate the playful parody and the contemporary spin. From ecology to gender roles, the messages are sometimes a bit heavy (wolves and bears, far from being scary predators, are helped by strong girls who conserve the forest), but the dialogue is cool, the farce is wild, and kids will appreciate how the damsels in distress make their own happy endings. In fact, these comedies could be a start for lively classroom writing projects and readers' theater. Hazel Rochman