The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Stories
Jon Scieszka, illustrations by Lane Smith
Viking
Fiction, CH Collection/Fantasy/Humor/Picture Book
Themes: Avians, Canids, Classics, Cross-Genre, Fables and Fairy Tales, Fantasy Races, Small Animals, Twists
****+
Description
A Goldilocks thwarted by the exceptionally oversized chairs at the home of the Three Elephants... a peculiar race to determine if the Hare really can grow hair faster than the Tortoise can run... a giant who insists on adding his own story to a fairy tale collection... a mischievous little man made entirely of stinky cheese... What, these aren't the stories you're used to? Correct - they're not fairy tales. They're fairly stupid tales, brought to you by your narrator, Jack.
Review
This award-winning book still gets decent library circulation, so it was there when we hit a lull at work. Just as the title promises, every story in this collection is stupid and more than a little sarcastic and silly. The fourth wall is gleefully shattered by Jack, a narrator who often has trouble keeping the characters in line, while the little red hen (who canonically made a loaf of bread without assistance despite repeated requests for aid with planting the wheat, milling the flour, and baking the loaf) insists on trying to squeeze her story into whatever blank spaces she can find... even if they're before the title page or on the back cover. The tales are all short enough not to overstay their welcome, as is the book itself. It made this grown-up chuckle more than once.