Ouch!
A Tale from Grimm retold by Natalie Babbitt
Illustrated by Fred Marcellino
I was looking for something different that is why I initially picked this book. One of the things about this book that I thought was interesting is that the title is on the back of the book and the front is a picture that indicates what the story is about. When I began flipping through the book the illustrations caught my attention. The illustrations looked like they were colored with watercolors and are bright but not too distracting. I really enjoyed the expression on the faces of the characters. This little detail helped to make the illustrations humorous and reinforced what the text was saying. Another thing that I liked about the illustrations are that they were quite large, sometimes taking up an entire page. The reason I am so fond of this is that large illustrations are easier for students to see when reading the book aloud.
When it comes to the plot of this book it is not the bright tale that the illustrations might indicate. The basic plot is that a king does not want his daughter to marry a certain man so he demands that this man go to hell and get three hairs from the devil’s head. This is not your normal fairy, it is pretty dark. The author did a good job of trying to make the story not as dark but the fact that it involves the devil and hell, two things greatly associated with evil, automatically make the story dark. This book is recommended for all ages but I would read it to older children and refrain from reading it to children in primary grade, ages 5 -8. The reason being that I am not sure whether or not children at these ages would know what hell or the devil is. Older children would probably have background knowledge of hell and who the devil is so they could make sense of the tale more than younger kids would. This story is a good example of what fairytales from the Brothers Grimm might be like but in a little more kid friendly format.