Smoky Mountain Rose: An Appalachian Cinderella (Picture Puffins)
Kindergarten-Grade 4.  Schroeder has taken the classic Perrault fairy tale and recast it "smack in the heart o' the Smoky Mountains." He begins his retelling with the directive, "Now lis'en," and continues to relate the familiar events in lilting mountain dialect with plenty of homespun humor. Seb, the love interest here, is a "real rich feller?made his fortune in sowbellies and grits." Rose's transformation takes place through intervention of a kindhearted, articulate hog. The tale concludes, "To this day, Rose and Seb are still livin' there, and folks reckon they're 'bout the happiest twosome in all o' Tarbelly Creek," giving the story a contemporary bent. Everyone knows what's going to happen, but getting there is half the fun. Sneed's slick, stylized watercolors seem at first to be out of sync with the down-home narrative, but it quickly becomes clear that the disparate union is a successful one. The paintings are realistically rendered but slightly distorted?figures are elongated and angular, features exaggerated, and perspectives askew. People are clad in fashions of the 1940s and the lush Appalachian landscape is always in evidence. The fanciful, but decidedly quirky artwork effectively informs readers, in case they didn't already know it, that there's magic in them thar hills. An appealing all-American addition to the canon of "Cinderella" variants.?Luann Toth, School Library JournalCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.