Goldie Locks Has Chicken Pox by Erin Dealey and illustrated by Hanako Wakiyama

I loved this book! It was so cute, and it even had a moral in it. Okay, so it took me a little thinking to get to it, but I did and here it is: do unto others as you would have them do unto you! This is the lesson that Goldie's brother must learn as he torments his older sister while she is sick and in doing so ends up with the chicken pox himself. One of my favorite things about this book was how it incorporated different fairytales and different fairytale characters into this story. For example, the three bears from Goldie Locks and the Three Bears are mentioned and little red riding hood. More than that though, there are characters from rhymes. "Jack be nimble! Jack be quick! Come and see! My sister's sick!" It reminded me of the Shrek movies and how they managed to squeeze nearly every fairytale and folktale in to it, and they did it in such a clever way! One of the other things that I liked about this book was that the illustrations look vintage. They look like they belong in a book with cardboard covers and a shiny gold binding. Even the furniture and the dress looks like this book was written in the forties. Last thing that I really liked about this book is that it flowed so nicely. This is due in part to the fact that the words all rhyme, but still it was nice to read, like the verbal equivalent of looking at an aesthetically pleasing painting.

This book could come in useful in the classroom in a number of ways. The first having to do with the lesson that I mentioned above. It makes for an important life lesson as well as an important thing for students to remember in the classroom. It could also be used when talking about siblings and how we should be nice to them. This book could be used to help explain the chicken pox to students, perhaps when a peer is out with them. In addition, it could be used to begin a genre discussion. You could read this book to your students first and then begin talking about different fairytales and folktales. Or it could be read half way through your genre unit and you could make a game of seeing how many different stories within this story the students can identify. Useful and entertaining- I would have this in my classroom.

Ages 5 to 6 :-)