Sleeping Ugly

Book 7
Title: Sleeping Ugly
Author: Jane Yolen
Picture Book? (Yes or no): Yes
Posting date and/or number: March 3, 2008

In Jane Yolen’s, “Sleeping Ugly”, the characters in the story are quite at ease. The picture illustration brings a sense of humor to the classical fairy tales and in fact teaches students and children that beauty is not necessarily everything. Like many fairy tales, there is a beautiful princess named Miserella. It is funny because she brings misery upon other people even with all the beauty she has and also it is the opposite of Cinderella who we knew to be kind and helping. Miserella ends up getting lost in the forest because her horse even knows of her badness that she has from within and abandons her. Miserella runs into an old woman where she kicks her foot and demands that she takes her home. The old woman is a fairy who leads her to Plain Jane’s house. Plain Jane is much nicer and kind from within but she lacks the beauty from the outer interior. Eventually due to Plain Jane’s niceness, she is granted three wishes and with that, she uses two wishes to save Princess Miserella from the old fairies magical curses she puts on her. One curse was to make toads fall out of her mouth and the other was turning her foot to cement. After all the fighting and bickering between the fairy and Miserella, the fairy accidentally puts a sleeping curse on all of them, which only a prince can remove by kissing the “sleeping beauty”. The story is quite different from the usual fairy tale but does add a sense of humor and wit to the story, as well as, the good old usual moral, which in this case was to “Let sleeping princesses lie or lying princess’s sleep, whichever seems wisest.” It is in fact a play on words that does get the whole point and adds to the humor of the story.