This imaginative collection has both amusing and touching versions of some old favorite folktales. 'Straw into Gold' features Rumpelstiltzkin as an attractive young elf, and in 'The Granddaughter' an annoying Little Red Riding Hood drives both Granny and the wolf up the wall. Alternate endings to well-known tales include one in which 'the Gingerbread Man turns out to be carnivorous and eats the fox.'

``Once upon a time, in the days before Social Security or insurance companies, there lived a miller and his daughter, Della, who were fairly well-off and reasonably happy until the day their mill burned down.'' So begins a set of the most imaginatively twisted tales since Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith hit the scene. The spin that Vande Velde (Dragon's Bait, 1992, etc.) surehandedly puts on familiar stories sends them tumbling in logical directions: Della decides that gentle Rumplestiltskin will be a better father than the greedy king; having seen what the princess is like, Prince Sidney is outta there as soon as he's no longer a frog; the oldest Billy Goat Gruff butts his brothers into the drink for not warning him about the troll; and a princess who can't sleep because of a pea is entirely too fussy for Prince Royal. Jack of the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood suffer hilarious, deserved misadventures; Hansel and Gretel are a pair of young killers; and Beauty almost turns Beast down when she sees him in human form. The author's creative juices are far from exhausted by these, so she intersperses even more plot ideas, in the form of shorter ads, poems, etc., throughout. Terrific fun: lighter of heart than Galloway's Truly Grim Tales (p. 856), and comparable in quality to William Brooke's classic sendups (A Telling of the Tales, 1990, etc.). (Folklore. 9- 13)"

The author reexamines a baker's dozen worth of classic tales, casting the characters in a different light (e.g., the Frog Prince regains his human form and eschews the snooty princess for a humbler maiden). Ages 8-12. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Aug.)

Gr 4-8--A different take on traditional icons of virtue and evil. In the course of retelling some popular fairy tales, Vande Velde challenges readers' notions of good, bad, and ugly by examining the stock characters' motivations and often recasting them in a different light. Needless to say, these role reversals affect very different outcomes to the familiar, if slightly fractured, story lines. For example, kindhearted Rumpelstiltzkin wins the heroine away from the vain, self-important king, and the Frog Prince, once restored to his princely stature, rejects the haughty princess and goes home to the goose girl. To say nothing of the demonic twins Hansel and Gretel, who have done in one mother and are ready to take on another. Modern references and sensibilities, such as those in the And Now a Word from Our Sponsor'' andPG-13,'' add to the humor (often the gallows variety). Entertaining and provocative, these selections make good read-alouds and can be used to spark discussion or creative writing exercises.--Luann Toth, School Library Journal