Review by Booklist Review
Ages 4^-7. Like Vozar and Lewin's M. C. Turtle and the Hip Hop Hare (1996), this happenin' rap gives an old story an urban setting, a rhythmic beat, and a contemporary silliness that kids will love. Everything takes place in the hood, where spoiled Rapunzel whines for the newest designer wear, the prince gives her split ends when he climbs her hair, and the witch zaps him into the wilderness of downtown. Lewin's wild, scribbled cartoons, with thick lines and neon colors, pick up the nonsense in word and action. Great to read aloud, this would be fun to pair with Zelinsky's sumptuous traditional Rapunzel (1997) to increase kids' pleasure in both the parody and the original fairy tale. --Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Despite a thick spray of puns and allusions, this fairy-tale parody delivered in rapthe hair apparent to Vozar and Lewin's Yo, Hungry Wolf!disappoints with its inconsistent text. Dogs have the day: Lewin's fittingly hyperbolic cartoons depict the heroine as an unspecified white pooch with flowing golden tresses, while Prince Fine, her suitor, sports a lime-green mohawk and tattoos along with his gray-and-white coat. Rapunzel, aka Rap, complains all day, "for a TV and radio./ She whined to have pizza made to go"; she is obsessed with styling her hair and tending her fingernailsthe worst sort of princess. Prince Fine becomes the narrator midway through with an abrupt shift from third- to first-person: "The witch climbed down the stunning girl's locks/ As I was jogging right down her block./ They call me Fine Prince. Everyone loves me./ There's no one who rises above me." But the livelier scenarios show flashes of wit: the prince, after waiting all day for his beloved to finish blow-drying her locks, discovers that she has teased her mane "in a new def style" that reaches for the sky, leaving him no way to reach her. But in the end, like the hair of the newly shorn heroine, the rap comes up short. Ages 4-7. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3ÄAnother traditional tale rendered in raplike rhyme and rhythm. This format, very successful in Yo, Hungry Wolf (Doubleday, 1993), is less so in RAPunzel. Funny illustrations depict the witch as a gray dog with purplish hair and Rapunzel as a poodle with long, curly golden tresses. Rap becomes a demanding teen, and Witch tires of providing for her: "Witch spent all her time pleasing Rap./All Rap wanted, the witch would just zap!/She zapped braces for Rap's crooked molars./When Rap wanted curls, Zap! appeared rollers./But Rapunzel soon wanted `More! More!'/Whining and whining from noon to four." Fine Prince, a local dog (with a green mohawk) wants to visit, but Rap is busy filing her nails and washing her hair. Finally, Rap becomes a hairdresser, marries Fine Prince, has two kids, and, in a trendsetting move, cuts off all her hair. Bright, cartoon illustrations add action and appeal, and are far superior to the overly long text. The uninspired rhyming seems forced, and the book as a whole falls flat.ÄLisa Falk, Los Angeles Public Library. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
This hip-hop fairy tale moves Rapunzel's tower from the woods to the hood and depicts the heavy-haired prisoner as a whiny, materialistic glamour girl. Kids will probably enjoy reciting the text and laughing at the cartoon dog characters and the punk rock prince, who overlooks Rapunzel's vanity because she has def hair and fashion sense. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The team behind Yo, Hungry Wolf! (1993) brings forth a rap retelling of Rapunzel. All the characters are dogs in this blithe version, but that's not the only change. Rapunzel's father dumps his marshmallow ice cream all over the witch until she looks like ""a humongous s'more."" She takes his baby, who grows into the most whiny and demanding of teens, a long-nosed pup with a cascade of golden tresses. Fine Prince, a dog with attitude and a green mohawk, spies Rap from her highrise window, but is at first put off both by Rap's self-involvement and the presence of the witch. He gets to her room by the traditional route. The witch literally explodes, and all is well as Rap opens her own beauty salon, bears Fine Prince twins, and sports a crew cut. The rhyme is bouncy with a solid beat; Lewin's expressive black lines and wild doggy outfits are a good match for the words. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
