The Great Fairy Tale Disaster

This fractured fairy tale, a companion to The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster (2009), sprints to its finish as the wolf from the Three Little Pigs drops in on half a dozen other stories in search of some stress relief. Laughs are plentiful, and intriguing story possibilities flash by like train stations. First stop, Cinderella, where the fairy godmother gives the wolf a dress for the ball. “Wolves don’t wear dresses!” he cries, and skedaddles. He rushes up the beanstalk and down again, gets kissed by the Prince (“Yuck!... I’m not being kissed!”), and has some porridge (“What are you doing in our fairy tale?” asks Mommy Bear). Williamson’s figures have bendy appendages and eraser-shaped heads; colors and shapes swirl and the atmosphere is full of floating things, as if everything’s spinning. Sure enough, chaos reigns in the final pages—“Hansel and Gretel pushed Prince Charming into an oven. And Puss in Boots pricked his paw on a spindle and fell asleep for a hundred years”—before the wolf returns to his old job. Just the thing for a can’t-sit-still crowd. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)