Editorial Reviews Publishers Weekly
Snappy dialogue drives this fairy tale parody about a hapless royal story writer who's lost his notes and a self-important king who--in the tradition of The Monster at the End of This Book and Do Not Open This Book!--tries to dissuade would-be readers: "If you turn one more page of this book I will throw you in the dungeon!" The writer scrambles to reconstruct his story (it's about a princess, a pea, and 15 mattresses), while the king tries to guess the title ("Was it The Princess and the Incredibly Handsome King?... Was it The Princess and the Amazingly Wise King?"). Fairy tale characters have walk-ons throughout ("Er... my, my, Your Majesty... What a big crown you have..." says a "thoroughly confused" wolf, dressed up like Red Riding Hood's grandmother). Allwright carries through the under-construction theme with pages laid out on graph paper and digital scraps that peel back to reveal additional story elements; she draws the characters with a friendly retro touch. Lewis handles her no-story story with sparkle, and children will enjoy the feeling of having avoided the king's wrath. Ages 3 7. (Sept.)
My thoughts:
My children love books like this. Seasame Streets There's a Monster at teh End of this Book is one of our favorite books to read and reread. Last year I shared it with my preschool class and it became one of the most read books on our library shelf. Because of that I was drawn immediately to this book. The vain king keeps ordering the reader to stop reading the book, put it down, stop turning pages just like Grover in the other book. Then once the writer reassmbles all of his notes he has to tell the whole story he meant to tell in two pages of lots of text. It was a fun book to read and I can see us rereading it in the future.
Details
•Pub. Date: August 2010
•Publisher: ME Media, LLC
•Format: Hardcover , 32pp
•ISBN-13: 9781589250949
•ISBN: 158925094X
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