Caldecott Honor with Fairy Tales: Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein

The ALA announced its many medal winners today. Alas, my top pick, Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse did not receive any honors and I am admittedly sad.  However, to cheer us up, I will share one of the Caldecott Honor winners--there were only 2--which does contain fairy tale stories and it is Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein, a great book all on its own. Congrats to Stein for the well-deserved honor and using fairy tales along the way.

Book description from the publisher:

It’s time for the little red chicken’s bedtime story —and a reminder from Papa to try not to interrupt. But the chicken can’t help herself! Whether the tale is HANSEL AND GRETEL or LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD or even CHICKEN LITTLE, she jumps into the story to save its hapless characters from doing some dangerous or silly thing. Now it’s the little red chicken’s turn to tell a story, but will her yawning papa make it to the end without his own kind of interrupting? Energetically illustrated with glowing colors —and offering humorous story-within-a-story views —this all-too-familiar tale is sure to amuse (and hold the attention of ) spirited little chicks.

It is a great book and quite funny and uses fairy tales in a clever and entertaining way. Highly recommended all around.

For a full list of all the ALA awards go to the press release.

And here it is again, one of the books of 2010 which receives a SurLaLune Award for Great Fairy Tale Picture Book.  It won't up its sales and insure it stays in print for decades, but hey, I love it.