Once upon a time a wicked witch lured an unsuspecting brother and sister to a mouthwatering gingerbread house, a girl dressed in red ventured through the woods with a basket of wine and cake for her ailing grandmother, and a jealous queen disguised as a farmer’s wife offered a poisoned apple to her beautiful step-daughter.
Let’s not forget the runaway pancake, the pumpkin that magically turned into a golden carriage, the single pea hidden under a pile of mattresses, the boy who traded a dairy cow for a bag of magic beans, or the cheeky girl who entered a strange cottage and helped herself to a just-right bowl of porridge.
Surely food is the best part of fairy tales, which is why I’m especially excited that once upon a time last week, A Cooked-Up Fairy Tale by Penny Parker Klostermann and Ben Mantle officially hit the streets!
I loved their previous picture book (Penny’s debut), There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed a Knight (Random House, 2016), duly noting that Penny included a cook and his recipe book in her rollicking, rhyming, burpity-licious word feast (hilarious but “not polite!”). So, imagine my delight upon seeing how Penny cooked up a temptingly toothsome fractured fairy tale, seasoned with generous amounts of humor, surprise, suspense, wonder, and joy.
