Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales

by Kiersten White

Overview

Kiersten White, the author of the NYT bestselling Paranormalcy trilogy, is ready to make her middle grade debut!

Once upon a time, a girl skipped into the forest and became a zombie.Wait, no, that's not how this story is supposed to go. Let's try again.Once upon a time, a boy did a horrible job as a sheep-sitter and burned his tongue on stolen pie.No, children in these stories are always good and virtuous. From the top.Once upon a time, a king and queen tried to find a princess for their son to marry, and he wound up fleeing from a group of very hairy vampires.Hmmm...What about, once upon a time, a bunch of fairy tales got twisted around to be completely hilarious, a tiny bit icky, and delightfully spooky scarytales... in other words, exactly what fairy tales were meant to be. Grab some flaming torches, maybe don't accept that bowl of pease porridge, and get ready for a wickedly fun ride with acclaimed author Kiersten White and fairy tales like you've never heard them before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545945868
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Lexile:	630L (what's this?)
File size:	38 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kiersten White is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels for young adults. She lives with her family near the ocean in San Diego. While she spends most of her time in the sun, she still courts the occasional shadow. Visit her online at kierstenwhite.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Best-selling YA author White makes her middle grade debut in this creepy but hilarious collection of reimagined fairy tales . . . will have readers eagerly flipping from story to story." -- School Library Journal

"Zombies and vampires and Grimm, oh my! . . . Disturbingly delightful." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Readers . . . will eat it up (just don't taste the porridge)." -- Booklist

"Accessible storytelling combines with familiar motifs . . . Plan for uproarious amusement" -- BCCB

From the Publisher

05/01/2017
Gr 4–6—Best-selling YA author White makes her middle grade debut in this creepy but hilarious collection of reimagined fairy tales. Readers will be quick to recognize familiar faces like Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Snow White, but the recognition stops there. These archetypal figures, along with their stories, are subverted by macabre characterizations that see them turning into zombies, vampires, or worse. In White's nameless "scarytale" kingdom, monsters and little girls might be the same thing. Princes and princesses might be locked in towers (or coffins) for a good reason. Each story blurs the line between good and evil, such that the only true foe is misunderstanding. With clever wordplay and confused homonyms (hair/Herr; pea/pee), White makes it clear that spelling and meaning matter greatly. But staying alive matters most of all. Even when the plot is frightening, readers can rest assured that there's a joke around the corner. Short, adapted nursery rhymes separate stories and elicit chuckles. Occasional spot illustrations also provide comic relief with their cartoony, exaggerated quality. The real star of this romp, though, is the narrator. Equal parts Terry Pratchett and Lemony Snicket, the unnamed omniscient narrator relates each scarytale. Some stories are scarier (and cleverer) than others, but the consistency of tone will have readers eagerly flipping from story to story. VERDICT For larger collections. This book will circulate best where fairy-tale retellings—especially Adam Gidwitz's "A Tale Dark and Grimm" series—remain popular.—Alec Chunn, Eugene Public Library, OR

School Library Journal

2017-04-26
Zombies and vampires and Grimm, oh my!Nothing is quite what it seems in these morbidly fractured fairy tales. In the prologue, readers meet a prince with no eyebrows and a Rapunzel with a mohawk. But wait—what about her fair hair? A simple but dangerous mistake, it seems, as the narrator explains: "I thought she was saying hair, as in the thing that grows out of your head and on your arms and sometimes on your face….But really she was saying herr, which is the German word for ‘lord'!" As it turns out, Rapunzel's fair Herr is a very large, very angry snake, Cinderella is a pyromaniac, and Red Riding Hood has had a bit too much of that vile pease porridge. White offers nine short tales, each prefaced by creepy inversions of classic children's rhymes ("What are little girls made of? / Brains and wails and people entrails, / That's what little girls are made of!"), all woven together by a wickedly irreverent narrator ("FEE FIE FOE FUM, JACK, THAT PLAN WAS REALLY DUMB…"). Some may find the stories and accompanying illustrations a bit too scary, but White's abundantly evident glee keeps things from getting too dark. In keeping with the stories' European origins, nearly all characters are white—except for a few who have turned an undead-shade of gray…. Disturbingly delightful. (Fractured fairy tales. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews