The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka

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Title: The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales
Genre: Fantasy
Author: Jon Scieszka
Illustrator: Lane Smith
Major Awards: Caldecott Award  & Texas Bluebonnet
Age group: 2nd-4th

Summary
This picture story book is a collection of fairytales.  These are not just any ordinary fairytales though, these are the fractured fairytales.  This is a specific type of fairytale that has the same characters but is told differently.  Jack the narrator is just trying to write this story and some of the characters are being uncooperative like the giant or the red hen.  Jack just wants to tell everyone's fairly stupid stories.  These fractured fairy tales are not full of the morals that everyone's used to like how the ugly duckling grows up to be a handsome swan, in this story he just grows up to be an ugly duck.
Evaluation
The humor created by Scieszka is unmatched.  The way that he brings Jack's character to life as something more than just the standard Jack and the Beanstalk makes the reader intrigued with Jacks every move and wonder what he is doing outside of his normal story.  The breakig of the fourth wall by Jack also keeps the interest of the reader flowing throughout the story and leads for an interactive read aloud.  I think a fun unit or extra credit work would be writing a fractured fairy tale based on the original and so I would use this book in my middle school class as an example of what a fractured fairytale looks like.




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