Rapunzel and the Seven Dwarfs: A Maynard Moose Tale

The collaborators of The Uglified Ducky offer another story in that fractured tradition. Storyteller Maynard Moose amplifies the silliness of this hybrid tale with snippets of moose dialect, translated in a glossary. When a witch can't find a way to keep Punzel's hair clean (it has become "distremely filthified—all full of sticks and twigs and little nastified wudgies of glop"), she locks the girl in a tower. In a contrivance pulled off more amusingly in Leah Wilcox's Falling for Rapunzel (Putnam, 2003), Punzel misunderstands the prince's request that she let down her hair and first throws down a pear and chair. When Punzel finally hears right, the "chubbified" prince's heft catapults the girl out the window when he tries to climb her tresses. Landing in a pond, she's rescued by "eight or nine seven dwarfs," but more problems await. Stimson's quirky digital art has a comedic exaggeration that's in keeping with the hyperbolic text. The prose, intentionally shot through with malapropisms and bad grammar, won't be for everyone, but fans should find it a perky read-aloud. Audio CD included. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)