Fairytale News

Author:  Colin and Jacqui Hawkins

Genre:  Traditional or Folk Literature

This book combines several Mother Goose rhymes and stories as if all the characters of those stories are in one community.  The combination is humorous.  The book uses Jack in Jack and the Bean Stalk as the main character and plot to combine the other folktales.  Jack goes out to look for a job because Mother Hubbard needs money.  He stops at the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood’s home until he finally finds a job delivering Fairy Tale News to the fairy tale community.  He delivers the paper to the three little pig’s home, the old woman in the shoe’s home and others until he reaches home to find out that he must go sell the cow to get money.  This is when the story follow the Jack and the Bean Stalk story.  After taking the goose from the giant, as in the traditional story, he drops a copy of the Fairytale News and the giant loves it so that he lets him keep the goose as long as he brings the Fairytale News every day.  The best part of this book is the actual Fairytale News newspaper in the back of the book.  This is a comical part of the story after reading the book.

I would use this book as a read aloud.  After reading the book, I would have each student read the Fairytale News newspaper in the back of the book.  I would have the class break up into groups and each group would take a couple fairy tales or Mother Goose rhymes and write down the differences and similarities to the traditional story.  Then I would have them find in the newspaper which articles referred to the characters in their assigned stories.  We would examine the newspaper as a class and talk about the different sections in the newspaper to extend this lesson.