Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like
10 best books like Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like (Jay Williams): A Fairy Went A-Marketing, Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave, The Sun Egg, The Snow Child: A Russian Folktale, The Weaving of a Dream, The Magic Nesting Doll, Mother Earth and Her Children: A Quilted Fairy Tale, The Girl Who Spun Gold, Anansi and the Talking Melon, Melisande
| Author | Rose Fyleman |
| ISBN | 0140547517 |
At a market, a fairy purchases riches found in nature. Then releases them for their own good or the good of others. A different season plays out with each stanza of Fyleman's verse. Visually exquisite, this is a story to be savored by both parents and children, and is a great book to be shared in preschool...
| Author | Marianna Mayer |
| ISBN | 0688085008 |
Sweet, lovely Vasilisa lives with her jealous stepmother and stepsisters on the edge of a dark forest inhabited by the evil witch Baba Yaga. One night the stepmother sends Vasilisa to visit Baba Yaga, an errand from which the gentle girl has little chance of returning alive. "An engaging text and accomplished...
| Author | Elsa Beskow |
| ISBN | 0863151639 |
A lovely little red-haired elf - whose dancing welcomes the returning sun in Spring, the golden leaves in Autumn, and the falling snow in Winter; and who is beloved of all the birds in the forest, because she always returns their fallen eggs to their nests - stumbles upon an unusually larger and orange...
The Snow Child: A Russian Folktale
| Author | Freya Littledale |
| ISBN | 0590421417 |
I interlibrary loaned this children's book because I read Eowyn Ivey's novel, The Snow Child and I absolutely loved it. At the end of Ivey's novel, in the reading group guide, Ivey mentions that there were several books that influenced her writing. This children's book was the book that started her mind...
| Author | Marilee Heyer |
| ISBN | 0140505288 |
A retelling of the Chinese folktale "The Chuang Brocade"
The Weaving of a Dream is the story of a widow who provides for her sons by creating intricate brocades. One day, she trades a brocade for a beautiful painting of a palace. She then spends years lovingly recreating the scene in brocade only...
| Author | Jacqueline K. Ogburn |
| ISBN | 0803724144 |
Katya's grandmother took a little matryoshka, a nesting doll, out of a small box. "If your need is great, open the doll and help will come. But you may only do so three times. After that the magic will be gone." A wicked spell has changed a handsome young prince to a pale glassy figure made of "living ice,"...
| Author | Sibylle von Olfers |
| ISBN | 1933308184 |
The incredibly intricate and vivid illustrations in this book are details of a modern quilt inspired by Sibylle von Olfers' classic storybook Mother Earth and Her Children. This vibrant new translation, in turn inspired by the quilt, explores the changing of the seasons and...
| Author | Virginia Hamilton |
| ISBN | 0590473786 |
Please note that this review of Virginia Hamilton's exquisite The Girl Who Spun Gold is going to be a bit different in set-up and scope, in so far that I am mostly posting general musings about both The Girl Who Spun Gold and also concerning Rumpestilzchen types of folk and fairy tales in global lore and...
Anansi and the Talking Melon
| Author | Eric A. Kimmel |
| ISBN | 0823411044 |
Now, I have been reading the “Anansi” series ever since I was little and I was always so amazed at the gorgeous artwork and the hilarious writing in each book! So, when I stumbled upon another “Anansi” story that was written by Eric A. Kimmel along with illustrations by Janet Stevens,...
| Author | E. Nesbit |
| ISBN | 0763607177 |
This delightful "modern" fairy tale describes the trials of a royal family beset with too many traditions from "historical" fairy tales. Borrowing themes from Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Melisande is a tale of traditional fairytale and mathematical logic. Unexpected things happen to characters...
| Author | Amy Krouse Rosenthal |
| ISBN | 0399246010 |
Wonderful things are being invented every day in Al Pha's world-fire, the wheel, even shadows! His big chance to be part of history comes when the King announces that the twenty-six recently invented letters need to be put in order. Al makes a bet with himself that he's the man for the job. Through a series...
| Author | Emily Arnold McCully |
| ISBN | 0590374877 |
This is the kind of a story that could have come from the minds of Disney's finest writers and animators during the days when Disney feature films were just about the biggest thing in show business. The quality is that high.
Beautiful Warrior is the story of two Chinese girls whose lives seem unconnected,...
| Author | Mercer Mayer |
| ISBN | 0689711131 |
"Mayer's telling is an interweaving of plot elements from the original Scandinavian fairy tale with inventions of his own and details from The Frog Prince. The spellbound frog is whisked off to the trolls' castle and the ungrateful lass loses her chance to marry a handsome prince until she creates a...
| Author | Wilhelm Grimm |
| ISBN | 0060543124 |
These illustrations are beautiful, a scary version of William Morris telling a dark fairytale of a girl and her mother that live by the woods. Soldiers come to their village so the mother takes the little girl to the woods and tells her to hide and return to her in three days. The little girl waits for three...
| Author | M.T. Anderson |
| ISBN | 0763615862 |
From the celebrated picture-book team of M. T. Anderson and Kevin Hawkes comes a wistful, wondrous ode to the natural pleasures of peace and solitude.
The boy lives alone at the End of the World, hunting treasure with old maps, finding fossils, whistling tunes, playing ball by the drop....
Carl's Afternoon in the Park
| Author | Alexandra Day |
| ISBN | 0374311099 |
This book did not win any awards. The appropriate grade level is Pre-k to K. The book is about two friends who run into each other. They go for a walk and one of the mom's leave her puppy and baby with Carl (who is the puppy's parent). The books goes through pictures of their day. This book was a really cute one....
| Author | Gyo Fujikawa |
| ISBN | 0448043041 |
I simply don't understand why some terrible children's books become famous, while others, which are quite brilliant, are virtually unknown. This was one of our kids' favourites when they were very small, and it is terrific. Most children's books that attempt to instil wisdom and moral principles...
| Author | Emma Dodd |
| ISBN | 0525479325 |
Nice sentiment about unconditional love. Lovely simple illustrations. The love between the mother elephant and it's child are apparent in the subtle drawings.
I do, however, have a problem with labeling the child with their behaviors. Child psychologists teach that you should be careful...
| Author | Lynley Dodd |
| ISBN | 0140565728 |
Slinky Malinki Catflaps is a hilarious rhyming story by Lynley Dodd.
Slinky Malinki wakes from a cosy sleep, stretches and slips out through the catflap and into the night. He's soon joined by his friends Greywacke Jones, Butterball Brown, the Poppadum kittens and the rest of the gang. Hobnobbing...
| Author | Susan Meddaugh |
| ISBN | 0395868335 |
When is a rat not a rat? When Cinderella's fairy godmother turns him into a coachman - well, more of a coachboy. And what does the coachboy think of this sudden change in his life? He's delighted to find the open bags of grain in the castle larder. But soon enough, trouble begins. His sister, unchanged by...
