Waking Beauty

Waking Beauty

by Leah Wilcox

Illustrated by Lydia Monks

Publish by Puffin Books

©2008

Genre is Fractured Fairytale

I choose to read this book based off of a recommendation of my friend who is a librarian for the children's section at the Jacksonville Public Library. When she showed me the book, I was immediately drawn in by the illustrations on every page. The story really captivated me since it is not the traditional story of Sleeping Beauty. The book involves Prince Charming trying to wake Beauty from her hundred year slumber. He tries all sorts of silly and riduculous way to do this before finally listening to the three fairies and learning how he is really supposed to wake her up.

The artwork in this storybook really brought me in because it is so colorful and bright and each character has his or her own uniqueness. Lydia Monks uses mixed-media arts to bring her illustrations to a whole different level of entertaining. The illustrations really add to the words because they are so dynamic and are such a big part of the story. When you find out that Beauty has been sleeping for a hundred years, you can look on to the page where you see her sleeping and see cobwebs in her hair. That really adds to the hilarity of the story and helps readers be able to see everything that is happening upon further investigation.

Although this book has not won an award, other works by Leah Wilcox have. This book could be used in the elementary classroom to get students interested in other fractured fairytales and to have students write their own short fairytales even. This could relate to the classroom through social studies since most fairytales have been around for a long time and there are so many different versions of them. An activity for students could be for them to go home and find their own version of a fairytale discussed in clas so that they could bring it in to class and see all the different types there are!