The Stinky Cheese Man

By Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith (illustrator),

Book cover of The Stinky Cheese Man: And Other Fairly Stupid Tales

Book description

The entire book, with its unconventional page arrangement and eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures, is a spoof on the art of book design and the art of the fairy tale. The individual tales, such as The Really Ugly Duckling and Little Red Running Shorts, can be extracted for…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Stinky Cheese Man as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Chris Harris

Author

This is the book that made my kids’ heads explode (not literally—this book is perfectly safe (as far as I know)) as it helped them discover the idea of parody: taking something familiar and twisting it in a funny, unexpected way.

We rolled and lol’ed together as we read Jon’s wild, hysterical takes on old fairy tales. The non-twist twist ending to his take on the ugly duckling story is still a running joke in our family. Jon’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Real Dada Mother Goose are also great for the same reason.

From Chris' list on kids and grown-ups will laugh, gasp, and grin at.

Kyle Scheele

Author

Let’s be honest – most fairy tales are boring and predictable and lame. But not these! In this book, Jon Scieszka turns classic stories on their head and plays with the idea of what a fairy tale should (and could!) be. Instead of the Gingerbread Man, we get the Stinky Cheese Man. “The Princess and the Pea” becomes “The Princess and the Bowling Ball”, Little Red Riding Hood is replaced with Little Red Running Shorts, and the Really Ugly Duckling doesn’t turn out to be a swan after all – he just turns into a really ugly duck. This book…

From Kyle's list on for goofy kids.