So my sister is getting her Master’s degree in Art Education. She’s currently in a class about picture books (or something along those lines). Her homework for this week was to compare three different versions of a picture book, so since I thought at least two of the three books would work for me for bingo squares, I joined her in reading the books for her homework. We got my nine year old niece involved too. She actually read the books aloud to us, which was awesome. The two bingo squares I’m crossing off are Remix and Classics. Here we go…
During this whole homework experiment I realized that I never actually read Snow White! I guess I just watched the Disney movie and called it a day. The Disney movie was good, but obviously there are a lot more details in the book. As Olivia (our 9 year old reader) said – the movie was a lot more appropriate for children. The book had the original Queen pricking her finger with a needle, seeing the blood on the snow, and deciding she wanted a child with white skin, black hair, and blood red lips. That’s a little bit creepy. Then she died right after she had Snow White. The new Queen is a jerk, just like the movie.
There was a really cool quote about the Queen: envy and pride like weeds grew higher and higher in her heart.
I could just picture the weeds of envy and pride growing inside the Queen’s heart. Anyway, she gets the huntsman to go out and kill Snow White and bring back her lungs and liver, then she cooks them and eats them. Obviously he doesn’t kill her, and she shacks up with the seven dwarfs. They’ll protect her if she’ll be their maid (basically). The Queen tries to kill her three separate times. The dwarfs save her life the first two times, but they can’t save her the third time. In the book the Queen gets away and doesn’t get chased off a cliff by the dwarfs.
Snow White is carried in a glass coffin by a king’s son, they go over a bump, and the poisoned apple falls out of her mouth and she comes back to life. She’s basically the original zombie! So Snow White and the king’s son are getting married, and they invite her stepmom to the wedding. Surprise twist – they have iron slippers heating up in the fire AT THE WEDDING, and they make the stepmom dance in them until they die! That’s literally the end of the book. #Classics!
OK so this book was like fifteen pages long. It almost feels like cheating, but it was a book, I read it, and it ticks off a square, so we’re counting it!
This was supposed to be a retelling of Snow White. Olivia said she had read this book before in school for her Advanced Reading (AR) program. This book was a little odd. It started out pretty interesting. The author tried to put a twist on things, and it could’ve been better. The stepmom was actually queen of the underworld, which is super cool, but they literally NEVER talk about that again. She’s looking in the New York Mirror (the newspaper – a cool twist on the magic mirror), and she sees that Snow White is the belle of New York.
The stepmom sends her bodyguard to kill Snow White, because she’s too pretty, but he doesn’t kill her (obvs). Snow White slips into a jazz place with seven (!) jazz men who offer to protect her if she can sing. Of course she can sing. The New York Mirror lets the stepmom know about Snow White, so she throws a cocktail party for her and gives her a martini with a poison cherry in it. She dies, the jazz men carry her coffin down the steps, trip, and the poison cherry comes out of her throat and she comes back to life. Snow White falls in love with a journalist and apparently everything is fine? There are literally no consequences for the stepmom though! #Remix