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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Retold Tales

Retold Tales are fun! Most of us are familiar with classic stories and nursery rhymes, but even if we're not, new twists and retelling can be great reads. I especially love them for storytime. I went searching for retold tales on my library shelves. Here's what I found and put on display:


Hush Little Dragon written by Boni Ashburn and Illustrated by Kelly Murphy. A mother dragon soothes her baby by singing him a rhyme. A fiendishly fun play on the Hush Little Baby lullaby, this mama dragon sings about snacks of the royal kind.






Young MacDonald by David Milgram in which Young MacDonald creates all sorts of mixed-up animals on the farm while the Old MacDonalds are away. He's got to set thing straight before the Old MacDonalds, aka his parents, get home.



Goldie and the Three Bears written and illustrated by Diane Stanley. Goldie can't seem to find a friend that is just right, until she happens upon Bear's house. Both the illustrations and the story are very sweet.




The Famous Adventures of a Bird-Brained Hen is written and illustrated by Jessica Souhami. It's a simple retelling of Henny Penny's story with colorful collage illustrations.











The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon by Mini Grey. This book takes a couple of characters from the classic nursery rhyme. It's great fun. The Dish and the Spoon run away together and become vaudeville stars, of course, there is some trouble along the way.


Tom Thumb retold and illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson is a beautiful book. Mr. Watson's amazing illustrations alone make it a must read. There is so much detail! I actually have a signed copy of this book from when Mr. Watson visited our library. In it he drew a big beautiful lion for my son(amazingly quickly I might add). It's a book that we treasure.


Bubba the Cowboy Prince: A Fractured Texas Tale by Helen Ketteman and illustrated by James Warhola. Bubba is the "Cinderella" of this tale. He's the stepson of a wicked rancher and has some really mean stepbrothers and the fairy godmother is a cow. This is one of my absolute favorite stories. The voice is spot on. It'll have you talking like a cowboy in no time.

I'd love to know what your favorite retold tales are.

3 comments:

  1. The Three Horrid Little Pigs is very cute. A helpful handyman wolf offers to fix their shoddily-constructed homes, but he is rebuffed.

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  2. Thanks for including me in your post, Heather! I adore retold tales. The Stinky Cheese Man reigns supreme for me, but I also love Falling For Rapunzel and Goodnight Goon and so many others. I haven't read a few of these in your post yet though- must head to the library :)

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  3. I will have to look for The Three Horrid Little Pigs. I love Falling for Rapunzel as well as Goodnight Goon! I'd forgotten about those two. Besides Falling for Rapunzel, Leah Wilcox also has another book out now called Waking Beauty. I keep meaning to order that one. Here's a book quote: “One hundred years of morning breath Wow! That could be the kiss of death!” Ha ha!Sounds like a fun one! I also meant to add The Ugly Truckling by David Gordon to this list. It's cute. Definitely a boy pleaser.

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