Fairy Stories for Little Children

Susanna Davidson

Lorena Alvarez

Usborne, 2018

128pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781474951784

This selection of five well-loved fairytales – Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and The Princess and the Pea – has been lovingly recreated in words and pictures to appeal to the young reader, either as a read-along or one who is verging on independence and knows the stories well enough to predict the text.

Fairytales never go out of fashion and there is always a new generation of children coming through to enjoy these age-old tales so a new, revamped version is just the thing for sharing with them. The illustrations in this edition are very modern although still retaining the charm of the past, making this a suitable book for those children who are older but who are learning English as another language, and who are expected to be au fait with these traditional tales.  They may even have similar tales in their own language that they can compare and contrast these with.  Cinderella, for example, has a version in many different cultures.

Similarly, the stories could be used to compare other versions of the same story or even the movie versions so their appeal is not limited to just emerging readers.