Module 6:  The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales

Summary

Jon Scieszka's The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales is filled with short stories that parody traditional fairy tales and children's stories. The Ugly Duckling doesn't turn in to a swan, he just grows in to an ugly duck.  The prince in The Princess and the Pea slips a bowling ball under the princess's mattresses so that he can finally get a wife, and it turns out that the Table of Contents falls on Chicken Little and his friends, not the sky.  The narrator of the story is Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk.  He leads the reader from story to story in a haphazard, mischievous way, darting in and out of the pages and contributing to the overall disruption of traditional story telling.  This is a Caldecott Award Honor book and Lane Smith, the illustrator, won the New York Times Best Illustrator Award.

Scieszka, J., Smith, L. (1992). The stinky cheese man and other fairly stupid tales. New York: Viking.  

Impressions

This book is fun to read and fun to share.  It is humorous and silly.  The stories take a twist, as if a five year had been given the power to change it and make it turn out any way they wanted.  In a very clever way, it actually helps us understand the predictable nature of traditional children's stories and fairy tales.  I must admit that I think the frenetic nature of the text and illustrations can be a lot to take in visually at first, but if the pages are not rushed the reader can take in all of the subtle and not-so-subtle techniques that Scieszka and Smith use to help the reader understand and enjoy the book.  This book would be enjoyable for students old enough to understand and appreciate this type of sarcastic humor and for those already familiar with traditional fairy tales and children's stories.

Review

From the front jacket copy (""...56 action packed pages, 75% more than those old 32-page 'Brand-X' books"") to the little Red Hen's hack-cover diatribe (""Who is this ISBN guy?""), the parodic humor here runs riot.  The insistent Hen is already squawking her tale at Jack--officious narrator, MC, and sometime participant--before a page labeled ""Title Page"" in 192 point type; the dedication is upside down, Jack's introduction carries a Surgeon General's warning, and the table of contents turns up late--after a story in which it plays an unprecedented role, then gets a jolt that knocks one tale off the page and, apparently, right out of the book.  The brief, colloquially told, thoroughly revised tales are in the same comic spirit: no one wants to the the Stinky Cheese Man, unlike the Gingerbread Boy; a love struck prince puts a bowling bah under his princess's 100 mattresses; ""and much, much more!"".  All of this is fairly amusing, but what most unusual is the innovative play with typography (a repetitive story gets smaller and smaller like an eye test, and words and letters are distorted in various other ways) and smith's wondrously bizarre and expressive art (""The illustrations are rendered in oil and vinegar,"" states the colophon). Irrepressibly zany fun.

Kirkus. (1992). [Review of the book The stinky cheese man and other stupid tales, by J. Scieszka]. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jon-scieszka-3/the-stinky-cheese-man-and-other-fairly-stupid-t/

Library Uses
Students can identify the traditional elements of fairy tales and compare/contrast those with the stories in this book.  Students could write their own version of a fairy tale and share it. The librarian can engage students in a character study and identify how a character's traits influences the outcomes in stories.  A comparison can then be made between the characters in the traditional stories and this book.