Very Little Sleeping Beauty (The Very Little Series) - Hardcover

Teresa Heapy swapped the office desk for the kitchen table, going from publishing books for Oxford University Press to writing books. In her spare time, she does comedy improvisation and plays the ukulele. She lives in Oxford, England, with her husband and three children.

Sue Heap has written and illustrated many books for children, including the New York Times best-seller How to Be a Baby. Sue lives in Oxfordshire, England.  

PreS-Gr 1—The night before Very Little Sleeping Beauty's birthday party, her father says she needs to go to bed early, but Very Little Sleeping Beauty is not very tired. Instead, she asks him for a song ("A proper sing-song song!"), to play, and to get her bedtime necessities like her bear, her blanket, and her "drink in her special-est cup." When it takes Daddy a long time to come back, Very Little Sleeping Beauty decides to search high and low, until she finds Aunt Fairy with a special gift, a spinning wheel that Very Little Sleeping Beauty thinks is a wheel for pretend driving. After playing, accidentally breaking the wheel, and apologizing to Aunt Fairy, Very Little Sleeping Beauty sleeps through the entire next day until she wakes up just in time for her birthday pajama party. The watercolor and ink illustrations are vibrant and playful, highlighted by the plain white backgrounds that dominate the book. Only three pages have a different color background, subtly showing that Very Little Sleeping Beauty is scared or braving the dark. The text has a great read-aloud rhythm that encourages kids to predict what will happen next, with font size variations that help emphasize certain parts of the story. Fans of Heapy and Heap's previous titles will enjoy seeing cameo appearances of previous characters at the end of the book. VERDICT A fun fractured fairy tale that will quickly become a read-aloud favorite.—Rebecca Quinones, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County