Review by Booklist Review
As in Mary Osborne's Sleeping Bobby (2005), this raucous offering twists Sleeping Beauty into something gleefully new. A green frog, in feathered hat and cape, narrates the tale in casual language that is filled with kid-appealing, gross-out silliness, which begins with the names of the royal family: King Gluteus, Queen Esophagus, and their beautiful baby girl, Princess Margarine. The slapstick continues when a hard-of-hearing fairy issues a series of prophesies: the princess will be transformed into a sleeping dragon, and only a quince (not a prince) can awaken her. Enlivened with puns and sound effects, the text will read easily to a crowd. More laughs will come from the full-page pencil-and-watercolor pictures, which show a motley crew of fairies (the tooth fairy is particularly distinctive in pink wings, tattoos, and a five-o'clock shadow) and then the princess as a scaly, pink dragon, whose castle-rattling snores are spelled out in bright purple capital letters. Lively fun that closes with a fractured but still happily fairy-tale ending.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-Princess Marge, daughter of King Gluteus and Queen Esophagus, who is nearly doomed by an irate fairy to homicide by a pie wagon, has the harsh sentence modified by another ("half-deaf") fairy, Tintinnitus. The princess will become a sleeping dragon and will "one day" be awakened by "a quince." Although all pies (and pie wagons) are banned by the king, the "kind and beautiful, sweet and clever" princess has her foot run over by a suspicious but unrecognized pie wagon on her 16th birthday and becomes a loudly snoring dragon. You know the rest! Hale's sassy, tongue-in-cheek tale may sound like just another silly "Sleeping Beauty" rewrite. However, enriched by Fine's large, double-page watercolor paintings with their whimsical human visages, distinctive fairies, and frog courtiers; the inimitable sleeping dragon princess; a repetitive refrain ("Yada, yada, hippity-hop"); and those cacophonous snores, this fantastic story is a delightful treat that begs to be read aloud.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH (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 parody of "Sleeping Beauty" gets points for inspired silliness (fairy Tintinnitus is half-deaf, leading her to cast a spell requiring not a "prince" but a "quince"); it loses a few for overloading the reader with gags and gimmicks, not all of them successful (e.g., the frog narrator who repeatedly says, "Yada yada, hippity-hop"). The watercolors capture the semi-grotesque medieval inanity. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this send-up of a familiar tale, a hard-of-hearing fairy manages to modify the crib-side curse so that instead of dying under the wheels of a pie wagon, the princess will turn into a sleeping dragon, who can only be awakened by a quince. Up grows the princess, so perfect thanks to her other fairy gifts that she has no friends, and when the curse finally strikes, she is transformed into a huge, snoring dragon--with red lips and nails, in Fine's typically boisterous illustrations. Nor can any wake her, until the arrival of dapper Prince Quince, whose kiss reverses the curse . . . with, that is, one important exception that only becomes apparent on their wedding night. Nonetheless, thanks to a pair of earplugs "they lived happily--and noisily--ever after." Hale gives the story a frog narrator, a cast with silly names and the lightly applied message that nobody's quite perfect. Set this next to the similarly themed likes of Jane Yolen's Sleeping Ugly (1981) or Margie Palatini's Three Silly Billies (2005). (Picture book. 7-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.