SLEEPING BEAUTY

Sleeping Beauty
Retold By: Mahlon Craft

Illustrated By: K.V. Craft

North Star Publishing, 2002

29 pages

Traditional Literature

            I chose to read this piece of traditional literature because of its beautiful and magical illustrations. Unlike most sleeping beauty stories, Maholon and K.V. Craft (husband and wife), bring the story to life. The writer and illustrator takes the typically simple story and enhances it into art. The story begins when a beautiful Queen, who's one desire is to have a child, meets a magical frog who tells her she is to have a daughter. Just as the frogs predicts, the King and Queen have a daughter and name her Aurora. During the celebration of their daughter, fairies come to grant Aurora with magical gifts; however, one evil fairy presents the gift of a curse. On Aurora's sixteenth birthday she will fall asleep eternally and the curse can only be broken by the kiss of true love. 100 years later Aurora finally is presented with her true loves kiss and, as all fairly tales do, lives happily ever after.

            For the illustrations, K.V. Craft, uses oil over watercolor paintings to bring out the classical characters that where inspired by Baroque paintings. I personally feel that the illustrations bring a historic feature to accompany the text. The text for the story is done in the most formal form, for it is opposite of the illustrations. Even though the story has not won any awards it has been recognized for its illustrations and the illustrator is a multiple award winner for other pieces. 

           I personally enjoyed this version of the fairy tale for it brought new meaning and incite on the story. When used in a classroom I would use it to teach traditional literature and use it to create a comparing and contrasting piece. I also, would use this story for mythology projects, art, and multicultural  The reason for using it as a multicultural piece is because of the written form and the accents in which are included within the text wording. I believe this story can be used for children of all ages.