From School Library Journal:
Grade 3-6-- A collection of 11 fairy tales. The book begins with Madame la Marquise's daughter begging Monsieur Perrault to write stories for her over the summer when they are away. These tales then are placed inside letters to Madame la Marquis. They differ slightly from the more commonly accepted versions. For instance, in "Little Red Cap," the girl gets undressed and climbs into bed with the wolf--"where she was astonished to see what her grandmother looked like without her clothes." The wolf eats both the girl and her grandmother. After the story, "Perrault" writes, "Children had better not listen to everyone they meet, and pretty, nicely brought up little girls should be particularly careful whom they talk to. If they're not, it's no wonder they get eaten up." All the tales include a lesson. The illustrations are overly bright and, although well executed, appear ghoulish in oranges, purples, turquoise, and greens. The figures are placed in Perrault's courtly France, but the images detract from rather than enhance the tales. Both the correspondence format with its moralizing, and the stark illustrations remove the tales from a dream-like setting and attempt to place them in reality, which is unseemly and disturbing. --Regina Pauly, Free Library of Philadelphia
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