The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

Product Description A Caledecott Honor Book A New York Times Best Illustrated Book This award-winning picture book is a wild, irreverent collection of reimagined fairy tales from the author and illustrator of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!. Makes for an extremely fun and funny read-aloud for the whole family. A long time ago, people used to tell magical stories of wonder and enchantment. Those stories were called Fairy Tales. Those stories are not in this book. The stories in this book are Fairly Stupid Tales. In this fourth wall-breaking picture book, young readers will delight in the strange twists on familiar tales. From “The Stinky Cheese Man” to “Cinderummpelstiltskin” these unique, hilarious retellings poke fun at classic stories and characters. The wonderfully offbeat and bizarre illustrations, as well as innovative play with typography and book design, make for a one-of-kind masterpiece from two powerhouse children’s book creators. Story List: · Chicken Licken · The Princess and the Bowling Ball · The Really Ugly Duckling · The Other Frog Prince · Little Red Running Shorts · Jack's Bean Problem (including Giant Story / Jack's Story) · Cinderummpelstiltskin (Or The Girl Who Really Blew It) · The Tortoise and the Hair · The Stinky Cheese Man Amazon.com Review If geese had graves, Mother Goose would be rolling in hers. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales retells--and wreaks havoc on--the allegories we all thought we knew by heart. In these irreverent variations on well-known themes, the ugly duckling grows up to be an ugly duck, and the princess who kisses the frog wins only a mouthful of amphibian slime. The Stinky Cheese Man deconstructs not only the tradition of the fairy tale but also the entire notion of a book. Our naughty narrator, Jack, makes a mockery of the title page, the table of contents, and even the endpaper by shuffling, scoffing, and generally paying no mind to structure. Characters slide in and out of tales; Cinderella rebuffs Rumpelstiltskin, and the Giant at the top of the beanstalk snacks on the Little Red Hen. There are no lessons to be learned or morals to take to heart--just good, sarcastic fun that smart-alecks of all ages will love. From Publishers Weekly Grade-school irreverence abounds in this compendium of (extremely brief) fractured fairy tales, which might well be subtitled "All Things Gross and Giddy." With a relentless application of the sarcasm that tickled readers of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs , Scieszka and Smith skewer a host of juvenile favorites: Little Red Running Shorts beats the wolf to grandmother's house; the Really Ugly Duckling matures into a Really Ugly Duck; Cinderumpelstiltskin is "a girl who really blew it." Text and art work together for maximum comic impact--varying styles and sizes of type add to the illustrations' chaos, as when Chicken Licken discovers that the Table of Contents, and not the sky, is falling. Smith's art, in fact, expands upon his previous waggery to include increased interplay between characters, and even more of his intricate detail work. The collaborators' hijinks are evident in every aspect of the book, from endpapers to copyright notice. However, the zaniness and deadpan delivery that have distinguished their previous work may strike some as overdone here. This book's tone is often frenzied; its rather specialized humor, delivered with the rapid-fire pacing of a string of one-liners, at times seems almost mean-spirited. Ages 5-up. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Grade 2-6-- Scieszka and Smith, the daring duo responsible for revealing The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Viking, 1989), return here with nine new exposes, all narrated by the ubiquitous Jack (of Beanstalk fame). Unlike the detailed retelling of the pigs' tale, most of these stories are shortened, one-joke versions that often trade their traditional morals for hilarity. ``The Stinky Cheese Man'