SLIS 5420 - Module 5 - Cinderella Skeleton

Bibliography

San Souci, R. D., & Catrow, D. (2000). Cinderella Skeleton (1st ed.). San Diego: Silver Whistle/Harcourt.

Summary

A retelling of a classic children’s story, Cinderella Skeleton puts a macabre twist on a familiar tale. Cinderella Skeleton spends her days hanging cobwebs, arranging dead flowers in vases, and feeding the bats beneath the eaves so she never has time for any fun. However, when Prince Charnel holds the famous Halloween Ball is determined to attend, permission from her stepmother or no. She seeks out the good witch who transforms the bats, jack-o’-lantern, cats, and rats into a nightmare drawn funeral wagon. She attends the ball and is instantly the object of attention from Prince Charnel. Cinderella and Charnel dance the entire night, until the spell of the good witch begins to break. Cinderella flees from Charnel, snapping her foot off in her hasty escape. Charnel, who is heartbroken, roams the land in order to find whose leg the foot belongs to. After much searching, Charnel and Cinderella are reunited and soon married to stay happy ever after.

Impression

The book is told in rhyme, which can be a good thing and a bad thing when writing stories for younger readers. The rhyme was well done, however, and enhanced the flow and narration of the book rather than being clumsy or over-burdening. The illustrations for the book were simply amazing and whimsical after a fashion so that even the most timid of young readers would be able to read what some may consider a bit scarier than some are used to.

Reviews

“No glass slipper appears in this often funny graveyard romance. Instead, skeletal Prince Charnel breaks Cinderella Skeleton's shinbone as she flees the Halloween Ball, leaving her with a "footless stump" and "In his hand, a foot-in his throat, a lump." Would-be princesses eagerly snap off their ankles, but the grim relic fits only Cinderella Skeleton, revealed in all her ghastliness: "Your gleaming skull and burnished bones,/Your teeth like polished kidney stones,/Your dampish silks and dankish hair,/There's nothing like you anywhere!" Catrow (Rotten Teeth) dresses the heroine in cobwebby lace and fringes her decaying scalp with wispy locks; he goes to town with the half-dragon, half-horse pulling the funeral wagon that serves as Cinderella's coach, and the palace gargoyles are not to be missed. A Cinderella story that girls and boys will love.”

Deveraux, E. (2000). CINDERELLA SKELETON (book review). Publishers Weekly, 247(39), 62.


“"Cinderella Skeleton / Was everything a ghoul should be: / Her build was long and lean and lank; / Her dankish hair hung down in hanks; / Her nails were yellow; her teeth were green--/ The ghastliest haunt you've ever seen. / Foulest in the land was she." San Souci (Sootface: An Ojibwa Cinderella Story) takes his interest in Cinderella variants one step further by creating a bony heroine whose trip to the ball has a distinctly Halloweenish cast. Even children who've never heard of The Addams Family will recognize the conventions (Cinderella Skeleton's housework consists of hanging up cobwebs instead of taking them down), and the plot follows the original folktale closely, with one grisly exception: instead of retaining her glass slipper, Prince Charnel gets her entire foot, snapped off halfway up the leg bone. This and other potentially scary moments are made humorous in Catrow's caricatures, which employ the long lines and angles of the skeletons to create particularly dynamic compositions in pencil and watercolor. Cinderella wears a fluttering cobweb gown and a blooming dandelion as her headdress, while Prince Charnel is just as handsome with deeply sunken eyes and ornamental cockroaches scurrying over his Napoleonic dress uniform. Although San Souci's unusual rhyme scheme, complex syllables, and breaks in meter may trip up a few unwary readers, much remains to be admired in this sweet tale of corpse-meets-corpse.”

Burkam, A. L. (2000). Cinderella skeleton. Horn Book Magazine, 76(5), 589-590.

Library Use

This would make a fantastic read aloud book for older readers. The rhyming narrative is great for reading sessions and the pages are packed with detail and imagery making for a great eye-catching presentation.