Newfangled Fairy Tales
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