SuitabookThe Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales
Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith, John Glore
- Reading
- Read it aloud with time to inspect each page. Pause when a familiar tale appears, compare the alteration with the original, and treat typography, page order and illustrations as clues rather than decoration.
- Themes
- Reworking familiar stories: Ten familiar fairy tales are rewritten with altered names, events and combinations, including versions of the Gingerbread Man, Cinderella and the Ugly Duckling. The book leaves its stance open to more than one reading.
- Books and storytelling conventions: The title page, dedication, contents page, publication information and typeface are treated as active parts of the comic experience, while stories intersect and disrupt one another. The book presents this favourably.
- Irreverent comic behaviour: The humour includes sarcasm, name-calling, warnings presented as jokes and deliberately absurd situations involving fairy-tale characters. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Some humour involves sarcasm, name-calling and deliberately “stupid” or absurd twists. The unusual illustrations and layouts may also feel confusing if a reader expects conventional fairy-tale storytelling.