Interstellar Cinderella
Author: Deborah Underwood
Illustrator: Meg Hunt
Published May 5th, 2015 by Chronicle Books
Goodreads Summary:
Once upon a planetoid,
amid her tools and sprockets,
a girl named Cinderella dreamed
of fixing fancy rockets.
With a little help from her fairy godrobot, Cinderella is going to the ball–but when the prince’s ship has mechanical trouble, someone will have to zoom to the rescue! Readers will thank their lucky stars for this irrepressible fairy tale retelling, its independent heroine, and its stellar happy ending.
My Review: I am a huge fan of fairy tale retellings, and I am an even bigger fan of fairy tale retellings that take away the “whoa is me” aspect of the female protagonist. Interstellar Cinderella does just that. Deborah Underwood has given us a Cinderella that we all would aspire to be. She can fix rockets, has robots, and even is quite sensible when it comes to the prince. I am also very impressed with the rhyming of the text. It does not seemed forced and is actually quite humorous at times.
Teachers’ Tools for Navigation: Interstellar Cinderella would be a great addition to a fairy tale unit. I can picture a jigsaw/lit circle of sorts where each group reads an original fairy tale and a picture book retelling the fairy tale then the group discusses how the story was changed, the themes of both stories, compare/contrast the characters and other narrative elements, and then share with the class their analysis. Interstellar Cinderella is also a great example of a science fiction picture book for a genre lesson.
Discussion Questions: How is this Cinderella different than other Cinderellas?; Do you think the book ended with a “happily ever after”?; How does Cinderella save herself?
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