Caldecott Winners 1938-1989
Caldecott Winners 1990-2011
Picture Books for Younger Readers
Picture Books for Older Readers
I'm going to tell you more about Cinderella and the Glass Slipper by Charles Perrault (illus. by Marcia Brown), and Cinderella Skeleton by Robert San Souci:
Perrault, C. (1954). Cinderella and the Glass Slipper. M. Brown, illus. New York, NY: Charles Scribner and Sons.
I was drawn to this book because of Marcia Brown's beautiful illustrations. Perrault's tale is the familiar story of Cinderella - not the gory version the Grimm's told, and not the birds singing Disney's version - just the girl, her stepmother and stepsisters, and what happens when she wishes to go to the prince's ball. Simple, classic, perfect for reading to the little princesses (and princes!) in your life.
It's hard to find fault with a classic, especially one that evolved over time and has been part of our collective storytelling genre for centuries. It was not written to demean girls or women, it is just a story about a girl with a dream. Brown's illustrations are simply lovely and I would recommend this for all readers.
These are excerpted from a reader reviews on Amazon.com:
This review is from: Cinderella (Paperback)
There are parents in the world for whom nothing but the definitive edition of a book is good enough for their little ones. Fairy tales? Find them the quintessential edition of "The Three Little Pigs" or "Rapunzel" and they are pleased. Ordinarily this is a bit of a task. I mean, what truly makes one version of a story any better than another if they are vastly different in composition and interpretation? Which brings me to that 1955 Caldecott award winning little number, "Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper". Retold and illustrated by that deity amongst children's authors, Marcia Brown, the book is a most perfect retelling of the classic Cinderella story. It's not the gory Grimm Brothers version (no eyes are pecked out nor heels chopped off) nor the hokey Disney concoction. It is instead it's own sweet little creation, perfectly preserved within itself. Written in the 1950s it simply tells a tale that it would be a good idea to know if you're going to operate fully in society....As for the pictures themselves, they're evocative and lovely. Somehow Brown's choice of palette ensures that the book is bound to be loved and remembered fondly by children and adults for years and years and years. I could go into some odd diatribe about the inherent sexism of the book and Cinderella supremely wishy-washy tendencies, but for once let's just let the book be. It's a nice story rendered in colorful cotton candy hues and presented in a lovely light-hearted package. It may not be the smartest Marcia Brown creation, but I understand why she wasn't ashamed of it. If you'd like a version of "Cinderella" that just tells the story and gives you something lovely to look at, choose this one. It's purpose is to tell the tale in it simplest childlike form. And it succeeds.
This review is from: Cinderella (Paperback)
.... the classic French story by Charles Perrault.... was translated and illustrated by Marcia Brown and the book won the 1955 Caldecott Medal for best illustration in a book for children. Hence, this version is perhaps the version most familiar to those of the "baby boomer" generation (and, thus, their children). It is the classic tale of a girl kept in the background serving her stepmother and two stepsisters, whose fairy Godmother finds a way to get Cinderella to the Ball. It is a book that should be on the shelf of any child as well as any serious student of children literature. 
San Souci, R. (2000). Cinderella Skeleton. San Diego, CA: Silver Whistle/Harcourt.
If you're looking for a fun twist on the classic Cinderella story that Perrault and Brown offer, give Cinderella Skeleton a try! It reminds me of Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas style and I found it to be very clever! Instead of a young girl working herself to the bone in her step-mother's home, this Cinderella is literally made of bones and answers to her step-mother's bidding in their graveyard home. Told in verse, the story, characters, and props all mirror the traditional Cinderella story but are just a bit more "scary".
This would be a great book to share with students around Halloween. I would recommend it as a read-aloud for younger children since it is a tad creepy, but older readers would probably enjoy it on their own. It'd be fun to uses this as a starting off point for challenging kids to write their own "alternate" fairy-tale.
Following are examples of reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal:
CINDERELLA SKELETON (reviewed on September 1, 2000)
This fancy little piece of septet versifying works nicely as a vehicle to tell the story of the graveyard Cinderella. San Souci (Callie Ann and Mistah Bear, p. 1045, etc.) follows the original tale quite closely, substituting things from the bone orchard where appropriate: her coach is a hearse; the prince is named Charnel; her stepfamily is Skreech, Gristlene, and Bony-Jane; and, of course, she herself is a skeleton. Instead of simply losing her slipper at the ball, this Cinderella has her lower tibia snapped off. (Picture the prince traveling everywhere with the foot in a velvet case.) Yes, there are touches of the macabre here (each prospective bride pulls her own foot off to try on Cinderella’s), but never overmuch or to the point of terrifying. And most of it is hysterically funny. San Souci’s verse ultimately takes the show: “Cinderella Skeleton! / The rarest gem the world has seen! / Your gleaming skull and burnished bones, / Your teeth like polished kidney stones, / Your dampish silks and dankish hair, / There’s nothing like you anywhere! / You make each day a Halloween.” What a picture she makes. Catrow’s (The Fungus That Ate My School, p. 474, etc.) artwork is reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas—perhaps that can’t be helped when skeletons are the principals—but very much its own thing, with abundant cartoony comic licks and ghoulish creatures galore. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-202003-9
Page count: 32pp
Publisher: Harcourt
SAN SOUCI, Robert D. Cinderella Skeleton. illus. by David Catrow. Harcourt/Silver Whistle. 2000. RTE $16. ISBN 978-0-15-202003-3; pap. $6. ISBN 978-0-15-205069-6.Gr 3-7–Not for the faint of heart, this retelling continues the author's fascination with "Cinderella" tales. In challenging vocabulary and a complex rhyme scheme, the clever narrative tells of Cinderella Skeleton, a wraith who lives in a mausoleum with her horrific stepmother, Skreech, and stepsisters Gristlene and Bony-Jane. She wiles away her days streaking the windows, hanging cobwebs, and feeding bats until the Halloween Ball invitation arrives. A good woodland witch conjures up the usual participants into a funeral wagon, dragon steeds, a gown, and slippers, but in fleeing from Prince Charnel at sunrise, Cinderella breaks off her slippered foot mid-calf. Gross, yes, though later other ghosts break off their shinbones with the hope of fitting the leg-and-slipper remains ("Wire or glue; you're good as new!" snaps the stepmother as she pulls off each girl's foot). Catrow's wonderfully weird pencil-and-watercolor illustrations feature wiggly lines, lurid pink and bilious green accents, large-eyed skeletons, and grotesque mutantlike creatures. The envious stepfamily conveniently shrivels to dust, which is certainly less horrible than other endings (though younger readers will still be disturbed about those broken legs). This darkly humorous and spooky variation will tickle the twisted tastes of upper-elementary and middle-school readers if it is displayed where they'll find it.–Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA
Since these two books both feature Cinderella, they could easily be used in a library lesson that compared various versions of familiar stories. There are many other versions of Cinderella besides these two; there are also numerous other classic fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Bean Stalk, etc.) that have different versions as well. For school libraries, this type of lesson/display would be easy to incorporate into classroom lessons too - kids could write their own versions of fairy tales, act out short plays, examine the various versions found around the world, etc.
Or, if Cinderella Skeleton is the centerpiece of the activity, other "spooky" tales could be the compliment - anything Halloween related, like superstitions, Halloween traditions, crafts, etc.
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