Book Awards & Honors

• A Selection of the Junior Library Guild
• A Selection of Nest Literary Classics

From Booklist
The author of Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella (1998) and the new Cinderella Skeleton [BKL S 1 00] here gives the ever-popular picture-book tale a Southwestern flavor. While washing the fleece of a lamb her cruel stepmother has killed, Teresa meets the Blessed Mary, who asks her to tend old Joseph and the Holy Infant. When Teresa is finished, Mary returns and rewards her with a touch that places a gold star on her forehead. When her callous, clumsy sisters rush off for similar decorations, they are given not stars but goat horns and donkey ears.

In Sergio Martinez's elegant Hispanic settings, Teresa and her beau, Don Miguel, are slender, graceful figures, comically juxtaposed against Teresa's lumpish, elaborately dressed stepmother and stepsisters, who are portrayed with exaggerated expressions of dismay or annoyance. Mary reappears to help Teresa secure her stepmother's permission to marry, and by the unalloyed happy ending, horns and hairy ears have vanished, too.

Cinderella fans have to be rapid readers to keep up with the steady stream of new renditions, but this consolidation of old and new published versions mixes laughter and romance in pleasing proportion--and features an unusual (to say the least) fairy godmother.