Once Upon a Time, the End (Asleep in 60 Seconds)
Kindergarten-Grade 2–Here's a fresh approach to fractured fairy tales: take one small child's insatiable demand for Just one more story and add a sleepy parent's wish to get the bedtime ritual over with as quickly as possible. The result is this collection of eight condensed folktales. For example, Goldilocks and the Bears begins, There were some bears;/It doesn't really matter how many./There was a bunch./Let's get to the point: and ends, When the bears came back,/They found her asleep./She woke up, screamed, and ran home/So she could sleep in her own bed./Just like you. A few nursery rhymes (Hickory, dickory, dock,/A mouse ran up the clock./The clock struck eight./Oh, my, it's late!/So the mouse went straight to bed) and jokes round out the book. Blitt's ink-and-watercolor illustrations are amusing, with fine lines and soothing colors underscoring the comedy in the characters and situations. The cover shows an intensely alert toddler on the lap of a sleeping father, surrounded by several dozing characters (Goliath sucking his thumb, for example, and Red Riding Hood conked out next to the wolf dressed as Grandma). The sometimes sly, sometimes outrageous, sometimes simply silly humor will go over the heads of most preschoolers, but it's right on target for their older siblings (and tired parents, of course).–Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, ILCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.