A Handful of Beans: Six Fairy Tales Retold by Jeanne Steig with Illustrations by Wiliam Steig - Hardcover

Steig, Jeanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062051628 ISBN 13: 9780062051622

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998

Synopsis

Six fairy tales are told anew,And spiced with picturesquite a few.It took a pair of Steigs to do 'em: 'Twas Jeanne who wrote 'em. William drew 'em. Here's Rumpelstiltskin, in a rage; The Frog Prince hops right off the page; Hansel and Gretel thwart the witch; Jack slays the giant (and gets rich); Red Riding Hood and Gram survive; The Beast and Beauty wed, and thrive. That's quite enough. The book's a killer. To say more would be idle filler.

About this title

Review:

What is A Handful of Beans? Six classics in one book: "Rumpelstiltskin," "Beauty and the Beast," "Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Frog Prince," and "Jack and the Beanstalk." As retold by Jeanne Steig, however, these well-loved tales acquire a certain modern vim. For example, the greedy King in Rumpelstiltskin is "as happy as a hog with a herring" to see all his straw spun into gold. The mother of Beanstalk Jack has "a dab of a garden, and an old cow called Blizzard, because she was as white as the milk she gave, except for a few spots to make her more interesting." Although the vocabulary is generally simple, Steig doesn't shy away from words like "sauntered" and "rapacious." And the Frog-who-would-be-Prince, among other characters, regularly breaks into rhyming couplets. Combined with 34 colorful, cartoony illustrations by William Steig, this gently ironic smattering of folktales will delight the grumpiest of readers. (Ages 3 to 6) --Richard Farr

About the Author:

Jeanne Steig is the author of several books of light verse and prose, including Alpha Beta Chowder; A Handful of Beans, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book; and A Gift from Zeus: Sixteen Favorite Myths, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book. Ms. Steig is also a self-taught visual artist, working almost exclusively in street finds and other discarded materials. She lives with her husband, William Steig, in Boston, Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0062051628
• ISBN 13: 9780062051622
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144
• Illustrator: Steig William