by Lori Savery-Hinze

Created on: November 29, 2010   Last Updated: November 30, 2010

The Stinky Cheese Man is a picture book, which tells a number of fairy tales with twisted endings. The stories are told by the narrator, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk. Scieszka’s version of Jack and the Beanstalk is called “Jack’s Bean Problem.” Jack attempts to tell what he calls “Fairly Stupid Tales,” but he is often interrupted by the Little Red Hen, and the giant who threatens his life if he doesn’t tell a better story.

In this book, the tale of the Gingerbread Man is told as “The Stinky Cheese Man,” who is so stinky and unappetizing that no one wants to chase him. Other stories include, “Chicken Licken,” “The Princess and the Bowling Ball,” “The Other Frog Prince,” “Cinderumpelstiltskin,” “Little Red Running Shorts,” and “The Tortoise and the Hair” (as in the kind of hair that grows on top of your head). In “The Really Ugly Duckling,” the duckling grows up and turns out to be just a really ugly duck. As my 8 year-old son said at this point. “Jack’s right. These are fairly stupid tales.”

The tough part about this book is trying to figure out the best audience for it. The length of it makes it too long to read all in one sitting as a read-aloud picture book. Its length is more like a chapter book, but older children are turned off by the picture book format. Adult book lovers will appreciate the jabs at book formatting, like the title page that reads “Title Page” and the table of contents that has fallen and crumbled, but the actual stories in the book are not very funny. I read this story to children ranging in age from 6 to 11. None of them laughed at the stories, although I did get some laughs from the introduction that says, “… the rest of this introduction just kind of goes on and on and doesn’t really say anything… So stop now. I mean it. Quit reading. Turn the page. If you read this last sentence, it won’t tell you anything.” That was the last thing the kids found funny.

The concept of this book looked great, but it just didn’t come off as funny as it could have been. The illustrations by Lane Smith are eerie and funny in a Tim Burton sort of way. Most of the book's humor is in the cover pages and introduction. The inside cover boasts the price of “Only $16.00. 56 action-packed pages. 75% more than those old 32 page ‘Brand X’ books.” The back cover also shows a picture of the Little Red Hen pointing at the ISBN bar code, saying, “What is this doing here? This is ugly! Who is this ISBN guy?” The dedication page is upside down, because Jack says, “Who ever looks at that dedication stuff anyhow?” For children with the right sense of humor, this book is a good one to check out from the library. However, if you are one to judge a book by its cover, this one falls short of expectation.

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