Cinderella: The Dog and Her Little Glass Slipper

As she did in The Dinosaur's New Clothes, Goode gives a familiar fairy tale an unexpected cast, this time introducing a pack of canines with a good-natured spaniel as the title character. The author interjects some witty wordplay (Cinderella's stepmother is a ""well-bred"" lady; and one of her mangy stepsisters scoffs, ""Everyone would laugh to see such a dirty dog at the ball""), but it is the art that throws youngsters the juicier bone. Silly images abound: the nasty stepsisters, dressed in their finery with powdered wigs towering above their ears, primp for the ball; Cinderella's fairy godmother, a winged dog wearing a pink tutu, hovers above the ground; and the tongues of canine revelers hang out literally as the transformed beauty enters the royal ballroom. Goode works dog motifs into her luminous paintings with amusing frequency (dogs are featured on furniture and wall moldings, as weathervanes and statues and a paw-print pattern decorates Cinderella's wedding dress). This imposing heroine and the much smaller prince, a Jack Russell terrier, make quite the fetching couple as they celebrate their wedding at the tail end of this waggish volume. Ages 4-up. (Sept.)