Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a traditional literature book retold and illustrated by Margaret Early. This book hasn't won any awards and a good grade range for this book would be 1st-4th. This book is about a young princess who is given many gifts at birth, but one evil fairy curses her and says on her 16th birthday the princess will prick her finger on a spindle and fall into a deep sleep that will last 100 years, and at the end the son of a king will come and awaken her. The king got nervous hearing this and banned all spindles and had them burned in destroyed. Many years passed, and one day as the princess was roaming the castle, she came across an old lady in the attic who hadn't heard of the spindle rule. The young princess wanted to try spinning on the spindle, but as soon as she touched it, she fell into a deep sleep. The old woman was terrified and called for help from the servants, who carried the princess to the king and queen. The king called for one of the good fairies and had her put them all in a deep slumber until the princess was to wake. The news spread around to a young prince, who came to the princess's side and was able to awake the princess along with everyone else in the castle.

I really enjoyed this book and would definitely have it in my classroom. This book does have some large vocabulary in it, and definitely has more words than pictures. It would be good to read aloud to younger children, but older children in about 4th grade could definitely read it to themselves. It would be a good idea to do this book as a read-aloud then allow the children to create their own fairy tale or maybe create a different ending to the book just to allow them to use their creativity.