Snoring Beauty

Snoring Beauty

Author: Bruce Hale
Illustrator: Howard Fine

Genre: Picture Book, Fractured Fairy Tale

Summary (from Goodreads):  Everyone knows the story of Sleeping Beauty: A handsome prince rescues a beautiful princess from a wicked fairy's terrible sleeping spell.

This story is just like the original. Except for the sarcastic frog narrator, the garlic-scented fairy, and--oh yeah--the princess in this book not only sleeps and snores . . . she's also been turned into a hot-pink and purple dragon!

Certain to charm and delight fairy tale fans across the land, this raucous retelling is anything but a snoozer.

Review: A lot of the humor in this book was beyond my kids' comprehension; for example, I found the characters' names to be really funny, the word plays creative, and some of the illustrations downright hilarious, but my kids didn't notice that at all.  And the fact that they've never heard of a quince didn't help, either.  But they loved the snoring dragon!  The illustrations are almost like caricatures - very different from typical picture books.  With adult vocabulary and a sense of sarcasm, this picture book seems to be geared more for parents than for kids....

Rating: 3 stars