Carmine: A Little More Red


Melissa Sweet - 2005
    But Carmine is a dreamy painter, always in search of capturing just the right hue in her drawings, and this drawing—the one she begins in a lovely forest clearing just off the path to Granny’s—must be her best yet. Here is a new, lively retelling of a timeless tale with enough twists and turns to keep readers guessing until the very end.

Jack and the Baked Beanstalk


Colin Stimpson - 2012
    So when Jack comes home with only an old can of baked beans in return for their last few pennies, his mother throws it out the window. Overnight it grows into a gigantic baked beanstalk, which takes Jack to the castle of a giant who spends all his time counting his huge fortune. Jack helps the giant to find something more fun to do, and saves the café in the process!

Sleeping Ugly


Jane Yolen - 1981
    Plain Jane, on the other hand, has a face to match her name but a sweet and loving nature that earns her three wishes from a fairy. Miserella's horrible manners make the fairy so angry that her magic throws them all into a deep sleep. Will the handsome prince kiss the right girl?

The Sleeping Beauty


Trina Schart Hyman - 1971
    How could everyone in a castle - even the flies on the walls - sleep for a century and then wake up? This magical, beautifully illustrated tale begins when the king excludes the most difficult fairy of the kingdom from a feast celebrating the birth of his beautiful daughter Briar Rose. Furious, the fairy storms in and curses the baby, pronouncing that on her fifteenth birthday she will be pricked by a distaff (from a spinning wheel) and fall down dead. The youngest fairy softens the curse to a century-long sleep. Despite the fact that the king burns all the spinning wheels in the kingdom, 15-year-old Briar Rose finds herself in the tower where the evil fairy and her fate await her. The drama of the spell unfurls as she and the other inhabitants of the castle fall instantly asleep, from courtiers to kitchen maids. Thorny briars - moodily captured by Trina Schart Hyman's masterful paintbrush - grow up around the castle. Hyman depicts those who died attempting to break through the maze of thorns to reach the legendary sleeping beauty in a nightmarish illustration. But goodness and true love prevail when the perfect prince does finally find his way through the thick vines.Hyman won a Caldecott Medal for her work in Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges, and her version of The Sleeping Beauty makes us believe in the magic of the spell. The scenes inside the castle are alive with color and movement and rich with details that children will devour eagerly. Moods and expressions are rendered exquisitely, especially those of the wild, red-haired beauty Briar Rose. This wonderful read-aloud classic is one of Hyman's best.

The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf


Mark Teague - 2013
    It comes as no surprise that a wolf is able to blow down the first two pigs' houses. When the wolf can't blow down the third pig's brick house, everyone comes together and the fun begins. The first two pigs give him potato chips and sody-pop, and the third pig makes everyone a healthy meal. Since only one pig has a house left, the other two pigs and the wolf move in with her. The somewhat bad wolf is no longer hungry.

The Wide-Awake Princess


E.D. Baker - 2010
    When Gwennie pricks her finger and the whole castle falls asleep, only Annie is awake, and only Annie-blessed (or cursed?) with being impervious to magic-can venture out beyond the rose-covered hedge for help. She must find Gwen's true love to kiss her awake.But who is her true love? The irritating Digby? The happy-go-lucky Prince Andreas, who is holding a contest to find his bride? The conniving Clarence, whose sinister motives couldn't possibly spell true love? Joined by one of her father's guards, Liam, who happened to be out of the castle when the sleeping spell struck, Annie travels through a fairy tale land populated with characters both familiar and new as she tries to fix her sister and her family . . . and perhaps even find a true love of her own.

Cinderella's Stepsister and the Big Bad Wolf


Lorraine Carey - 2015
    Will Gertie learn to act like a true Ugly in time?

Waking Beauty


Leah Wilcox - 2008
    Every time the fairies watching over her try to tell him, he interrupts with his ideas of how to wake her. Eventually he gets the message, and his reaction is priceless: ?One hundred years of morning breath Wow! That could be the kiss of "death"!? With just as much interactive fun as "Falling for Rapunzel" (an IRA Notable Book and the winner of Maryland's Black-Eyed Susan Picture Book Award), this fractured fairy tale will elicit laughter that no one will be able to sleep through.

Into the Forest


Anthony Browne - 2004
    A storm is breaking, lightning flashing across the sky. In the morning Dad is gone and Mum doesn't seem to know when he'll be back. The next day Mum asks her son to take a cake to his sick grandma. Don't go into the forest, she warns. Go the long way round! Ages 6+.

Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales


Gregory Maguire - 2004
    . . nothing was as it seemed!What if Sleeping Beauty were actually a frog princess, doomed to be Weeping Beauty forever? What if the Three Chickens had to outwit Goldifox? What if Cinder-Elephant lost her glass plate slipper? Then you'd have this hilarious collection of twisted fairy tales from the master of the absurd, Gregory Maguire!

The Little Mermaid


Jerry Pinkney - 2020
    She is an explorer who wonders about what lies above the water's surface . . . especially the young girl she has spied from a distance. To meet her requires a terrible sacrifice: she trades her beautiful voice for a potion that gives her legs, so that she may live on land instead. It seems like a dream come true at first. But when trouble stirs beneath the ocean, Melody faces another impossible choice -- stay with her friend, or reclaim her true identity and save her family.Legendary artist Jerry Pinkney's singular reinvention of this tale about love and sacrifice empowers young, twenty-first century girls with the strong message that "you should never give up your voice . . . for anyone."

The Princess and the Pig


Jonathan Emmett - 2011
    Priscilla the princess has accidentally switched places with Pigmella, the farmer's new piglet. The kindly farmer and his wife believe it's the work of a good witch, while the ill-tempered king and queen blame the bad witch-after all, this happens in fairy tales all the time! While Priscilla grows up on the farm, poor yet very happy, things don't turn out quite so well for Pigmella. Kissing a frog has done wonders before, but will it work for a pig?Sure to hog all the attention, this story's frequent nods to well-known fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty, The Frog Princess, and Thumbelina-plus hilarious illustrations-will delight readers of any age.

Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper


Marcia Brown - 1954
    Brown's illustrated translation of Perrault's tale in which Cinderella leaves behind a glass slipper in her haste to flee the palace before the fairy godmother's magic loses effect won the 1955 Caldecott medal.A free translation from the French of Charles Perrault, with pictures by Marcia Brown.

Snow White


Jacob Grimm - 1812
    This edition presents the unabridged version of the Grimms' tale, with an original interpretation by renowned artist Camille Rose Garcia that artfully combines wit and dark romance

Half Upon a Time


James Riley - 2010
    After all, his father's been missing ever since that incident with the beanstalk and the giant, and his grandfather keeps pushing him to get out and find a princess to rescue. Who'd want to rescue a snobby, entitled princess anyway? Especially one that falls out of the sky wearing a shirt that says "Punk Princess," and still denies she's royalty. In fact, May doesn't even believe in magic. Yeah, what's that about? May does need help though--a huntsman is chasing her, her grandmother has been kidnapped, and Jack thinks it’s all because of the Wicked Queen . . . mostly because May’s grandmother might just be the long-lost Snow White. Jack and May's thrillingly hilarious adventure combines all the classic stories—fractured as a broken magic mirror—into the first of an epic new series of novels for the ages.