Synopsis
An opinionated, love-starved princess. Her status-conscious parents. Two muscular, but rude, hunks. Their kind, thoughtful brother. Three not-so-perfect peaches. An impossible challenge. And a whole lot of rabbits! Told from the point of view of a very untraditional fairy, this hilarious version of "The Three Peaches" shines a new light on the traditional tale and features a unique narrative voice and madcap illustrations. As in all good fairy tales, the vain, rude characters get their comeuppance, the fairy works her magic, and the princess gets her prince. So he's a little on the skinny side--he has a big heart. (The heart is a muscle too, you know.) Everything else is fair game in this side-splitting take on the classic formula.
Publishers Weekly
Happy ending inside!" reads a burst on the cover of this loopy send-up of a familiar story line about winning the hand of a princess. On the way to that happy ending, Bar-el's (Alphabetter) snappy text and Manders's (Quiet Night) animated, playfully exaggerated gouache and colored pencil pictures provide plenty of laughs. The narrator is a feisty fairy named Libby Gaborchik, rendered as a bespectacled white-haired type, who refers to herself as "yours truly," addresses readers as "darlings" and speaks with a hint of a Jewish-grandmother inflection. She diagnoses the ailing Princess Vera as "starved for love" and advises the distraught king that his daughter should eat three perfect peaches and then marry within a week. But not liking the manners of some of Vera's suitors ("This is the way to talk to a stranger?" Libby comments disapprovingly), Libby decides to help goodhearted but poor Marvin. Among the book's many pleasingly silly scenarios are Manders's vignette of the wide-eyed, wild-haired princess dancing a fandango after devouring Marvin's peaches and a large picture of that soon-to-be prince following through on the king's orders to coral 100 wild rabbits. A harebrained joke, but a good one. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)
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