Book cover of Shrek!

Book description

Read the book that inspired the famous film franchise in this wonderfully funny picture book.

Before Shrek made it big on the silver screen, there was William Steig's SHREK!, a book about an ordinary ogre who leaves his swampy childhood home to go out and see the world. Ordinary, that…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Shrek! as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Shrek! was a book before it was ever a wildly successful film franchise, but the book bears almost no resemblance to the movies.

Yes, William Steig’s ogre is both vile and reviled, and he has a donkey for a friend, but the story itself is very straightforward, detailing Shrek’s rampage across the countryside on his way to meet a “stunningly ugly princess” with whom he can live “horribly ever after.”

Steig had been a celebrated New Yorker cartoonist for almost four decades when he produced his first children’s book in 1968. He wrote and drew Shrek! when he was…

If you love Shrek!...

Book cover of Cinderelliot: A Scrumptious Fairytale

Cinderelliot by Mark Ceilley,

A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.

Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…

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A Foot is Not a Fish! by Cornelia Maude Spelman,

In a time of alternative facts and the loss of a shared sense of reality, A Foot is Not a Fish playfully illustrates the difference between what is true and what is not through absurd fun comparisons that every child—and parent—will instantly understand.

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