Goldilocks and The Three Bears

Goldilocks and the Three Bears is retold and illustrated by James Marshall. It was published this time around by Puffin Books in 1998. It is in the fantasy genre and is appropriate for grades k-2.

This is the classic fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This time Goldilocks is given a little more mischievious background aside from her already curious reputation. Just like in the original story, she wanders into the woods and sees the house that the bears live in. The bears are out for a walk to let their porridge cool so Goldilocks has a look around. She tries the porridge and gobbles up Baby Bear's bowl of porridge. She sits in the chairs and rocks so hard in Baby Bear's chair that she breaks it. She then falls fast asleep in Baby Bear's just right bed and does not hear the bears return home. She awakes to the scary realization that she is in the house of three angry bears and runs home, never to return to the bear's house again.

I think every child and adult has an appreciation for this story. Marshall gives it a new flare with his illustrations. His characters have more personality than some other fairy tales. The thing I noticed about this book was the vocabulary. There were a few words that I would not expect younger kids to recognize. This, however, opend up learning opportunities. A Text Talk lesson would be great for this story. The teacher could stop every few pages to ask the class what they think is going on and what they think will happen next. Some will know the story and others might not. At the end there is room for a vocabulary lesson. Many of the words, like scalding, are easily compared to words that kids already know, like hot. While this story is sometimes overdone, the simplicity is nice here. It gives new readers a chance to read a book with a little more text, of which they already know the basic storyline.