Sleepless Beauty (Picture Puffins)

In an earlier book called Cinder-Elly writer Frances Minters and illustrator G. Brian Kara retold the Cinderella story in compelling fashion. The pair works its magic a second time, this time setting the story of Sleeping Beauty in present-day New York City. In doing so they have created one of the most memorable characters to grace the pages of a children's book for a long time. The character in question is not the young narrator (who, in this telling, wakes up rather than falling into a century-long nap) but the wicked witch, a fabulous creation of malevolence and ill-will who carries rats in her pockets and sports a gruesome nose that only Richard Nixon's mother could love.