Mary Engelbreit's Nursery Tales: A Treasury of Children's Classics

From School Library Journal PreSchool-K—Engelbreit brings her trademark sunny style to this collection of 12 tales and successfully walks the line between adapting the stories for a preschool audience and watering them down. The world that these characters inhabit vibrates with bright colors, friendly animals, and buildings and woods of the timeless fairy-tale variety. Scary things happen, but only to the bad guys, and only offstage. Jack's giant dies falling from the beanstalk and Gretel pushes the witch into the oven, but the Big Bad Wolf escapes the woodcutter with only a scolding after he lets Red Riding Hood and her grandmother out of his stomach unharmed. Even the Gingerbread Boy eludes the fox and keeps on running at the end of the story. The artist portrays two of the three little pigs as female, as are the posh city mouse and her homely country cousin. The humorous expressions of the characters (see Goldilocks sinking into Mama Bear's super-soft bed for a laugh) and the lines of text incorporated into the illustrations are classic Engelbreit touches. This cheery collection will appeal to the artist's fans, as well as to anyone looking for not-too-scary versions of old favorites for young children.—