Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2013)

Tired of being the bad guy, the Big Bad Wolf goes in search of a relaxing fairy tale for a change. After trading places with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Goldilocks, he makes more enemies than friends and disrupts a number of beloved fairy tales. The richly colored illustrations play with texture and pattern, adding some depth to the silly but flat story line.

Kirkus Reviews

Old Big Bad Wolf is tired and wants a more relaxing fairy tale to be in, so he leaves the pigs behind. The results are not good. The players are familiar if their young audience knows the classic tales: Cinderella, Jack and his beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks. The execution is clunky. The Big Bad Wolf blows off Cinderella's fairy godmother because "Wolves don't wear dresses!" and is revolted by the prince's kiss when he replaces Sleeping Beauty. The Three Bears are entirely pissed off, and they chase the Big Bad Wolf past Rapunzel and over the troll's bridge. All heck breaks loose then, as a princess kisses a Billy Goat Gruff instead of a frog, and Hansel and Gretel push Prince Charming into the oven. The Wolf gives up, goes back to the Three Little Pigs, the end. Williamson's art is made in layered swathes of geometric pattern and color. Figures have huge heads and spindly arms and legs. The Big Bad Wolf himself is constructed with arms, legs and tail on an oversized body, his unusual head a long isosceles triangle set in many different pasted-on angles. Visual interest is heightened in tiny details: Baby Bear wears polka-dot headphones, the Big Bad Wolf himself wears a monocle that mostly tumbles out of his pocket. Children may get a giggle or two but may find the lackluster ending unsatisfying. (Picture book. 4-7)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

This fractured fairy tale, a companion to The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster (2009), sprints to its finish as the wolf from the Three Little Pigs drops in on half a dozen other stories in search of some stress relief. Laughs are plentiful, and intriguing story possibilities flash by like train stations. First stop, Cinderella, where the fairy godmother gives the wolf a dress for the ball. -Wolves don-t wear dresses!- he cries, and skedaddles. He rushes up the beanstalk and down again, gets kissed by the Prince (-Yuck!... I-m not being kissed!-), and has some porridge (-What are you doing in our fairy tale?- asks Mommy Bear). Williamson-s figures have bendy appendages and eraser-shaped heads; colors and shapes swirl and the atmosphere is full of floating things, as if everything-s spinning. Sure enough, chaos reigns in the final pages--Hansel and Gretel pushed Prince Charming into an oven. And Puss in Boots pricked his paw on a spindle and fell asleep for a hundred years--before the wolf returns to his old job. Just the thing for a can-t-sit-still crowd. Ages 3-7. (Sept.)

School Library Journal (Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 2012)

PreS-Gr 2 This companion to The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster (Tiger Tales, 2009) stars an aging big bad wolf. Aching for a vacation, he turns to a compilation of fairy tales and tries to find "a relaxing fairy tale for a change." The wolf barges right into some tales, while in others he creeps in unexpectedly. When Cinderella's fairy godmother dresses him for the ball, he find himself suddenly cast as Sleeping Beauty and receives an unsolicited kiss. At this, he hurls himself into another tale, Jack Skellington-style, and so on, until there is quite a tangle of tales (and more kisses, just for the ew-effect). The illustrations work in perfect tandem with this accessible and fast-paced romp. The beanstalk requires a pivoting of the book, and readers traverse checker-boarded forest paths and troll-patrolled bridges. The palette is bright and balanced, full of lively and textured patterns, stylized elongated fir trees, and rotund, huggable faces. Burtonesque curlicues wind around the pages. Flying objects and myriad small creatures leave little white space for reflection but offer plenty of opportunities for discovering hidden details in this densely illustrated, whirlwind tale. Anyone looking for a lighthearted read with a droll ending that will engage young readers will find it here. Pair it with any fractured fairy tales, while reading it with Mario Ramos's I Am So Handsome (Gecko, 2012) might present a good opportunity to discuss all things wolfish. Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School, New York City