Fairy stories for little children by Lorena Alvarez and Susanna Davidson
Usborne, 2018. ISBN 9781474951784.
This selection of five well-loved fairytales - Cinderella, Goldilocks
and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little
Red Riding Hood and The Princess and the Pea - has
been lovingly recreated in words and pictures to appeal to the young
reader, either as a read-along or one who is verging on independence
and knows the stories well enough to predict the text.
Fairytales never go out of fashion and there is always a new
generation of children coming through to enjoy these age-old tales
so a new, revamped version is just the thing for sharing with them.
The illustrations in this edition are very modern although still
retaining the charm of the past, making this a suitable book for
those children who are older but who are learning English as another
language, and who are expected to be au fait with these traditional
tales. They may even have similar tales in their own language that
they can compare and contrast these with. Cinderella,
for example, has a version in many different cultures. Similarly,
the stories could be used to compare other versions of the same
story or even the movie versions so their appeal is not limited to
just emerging readers.
Barbara Braxton