Cinders - you shall go to the ball! (Prince Cinders - Babette Cole)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Prince Cinders - Babette Cole
Date:	19/10/09 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: frun story

Disadvantages: none

My two daughters have always enjoyed traditional fairy tales and can pretty much retell all of the well known ones without any problems. As much as they like these stories though, they much prefer modern day fairy tales which always seem to have an original and comical slant on the stories they are based on. One such story which is definitely one of my six year old's favourites is Prince Cinders by Babette Cole.

This is a fabulously funny picture book that tells the story of our hero Prince Cinders who lives with his three big hairy brothers who make him do all the work while they go to the Palace Discos with their girlfriends. Prince Cinders (who is very small and weedy) wishes that he could be big and hairy too and it looks like his wish may just be granted when he is helped by a dirty fairy who comes down the chimney! She attempts to take a baked bean can into a smart sports car. His raggy clothes into a suit and make the prince big and hairy too. Unfortunately her magic spells do not exactly go according to plan - the car is tiny, the suit is a swim suit and Prince Cinders looks like an enormous hairy monster.

However, he does not realise this because when he looks in the mirror, his reflection is a handsome prince! He sets off to the palace disco using his car as a skate board. He meets a pretty princess who thinks that she is about to be attacked by a great big hairy monster. Luckily though, at that very moment, midnight strikes and Prince Cinders is turned back into himself and the princess thinks that he has saved her. He is too embarrassed to be seen as he normally is and runs away but as he does so he leaves his skinny jeans behind leading to a kingdom wide search to find the owner. Eventually Prince Cinders is found and on discovering that the jeans fit, the lovely Princess Lovelypenny proposes to him and they both live happily ever after! Now, did that remind you of any other stories that you might know??

I think that this is a fabulously fun story and very clever too with all the parallels between Prince Cinders and Cinderella. My daughter actually tells me that it is 'the funniest book ever'! She really does get the joke and realise that it is even funnier because it is based on the traditional tale that she already knows. We love the way that so many of the ideas are really zany and the fact that the prince is such a wimp and also that instead of a fairy godmother we get a dirty fairy that is totally inept. It's all brilliantly put together, and as an adult I probably appreciate it even more than my daughter.

The language and sentence structure is very accessible which makes it easy for my daughter to read independently although she loves to share it too and can often be heard reading to her younger sister.

The story is accompanied by some wonderful illustrations too that are all very humourous. As the book was first published in 1987 you might think that the pictures might look a bit dated but I don't think that they do - except for the absence of a few mobile phones I suppose. There is lots of lovely detail in each illustration and it is definitely worth spending time looking over each one.

Overall this is an excellent story and picture book that has stood the test of time well. It's a lot of fun and I am sure that most children will love reading it many times. It is available on Amazon for £4.98 although it can also be bought used for as little as one pence. I notice that there is also a DVD animation of the story which I am sure my daughter will love.

Summary: fun story based on a well loved fairy tale