Snoring Beauty

Children's Literature

AGERANGE: Ages 4 to 8.

Hale makes a nattily dressed frog the narrator of this funny, new, detail-filled variation of the traditional Sleeping Beauty story. First, he gives all the characters names to roll on the tongue, like King Gluteus and Queen Esophagus, the baby Princess Drachmina Lofresca Malvolio Margerine, and the neglected fairy, garlic-smelling Beebo. Her curse is that at sixteen the princess will be run over by a pie wagon and die. This is "bamboozled" by the deaf fairy Tintinnitus so the princess will become a sleeping dragon, to be wakened by a quince. Despite all efforts to keep them out, a pie wagon manages to enter and run over Princess Marge, as she is now called, and "Alla-bam" and Alla-beep" she becomes the sleeping dragon. After all others fail, Prince Quince manages to wake her for the hilarious happy ending. There are many sounds in the text inserted in comments and for the mighty snores of the sleeping Marge. Fine's opaque watercolors fill most of the double page scenes with lots of people in pseudo medieval dress, folks as ridiculous in their individual characteristics as their names. There is no subtlety here; the portrait on the jacket of the snoozing dragon with lipstick on her lips and manicured claws leaves no doubt about the tongue-in-cheek humor. Fine inserts other touches of fun, like a statue of the Greek letter pi on a pie wagon leaving the castle. There is visual and verbal comedy here for reading alone or aloud. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

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

Kirkus Reviews

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)