Here are 100 books that The Totally NOT Wicked Stepmother fans have personally recommended if you like
The Totally NOT Wicked Stepmother.
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As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.
This book shares my Andean setting and love of dance, so I am already rooting for it. I am immediately connected with the main character as she twirls down the path. I can relate to the wolf as well; I know how language barriers can cause misunderstandings. A clever twist to a beloved classic. The art is full of energy and captures the joy in the dance moves.
A 2024 Anna Dewdney Read-Together Award Honor Book
An irresistible rhythm tugs at Moni's heart as she dances down the path to la casa de Abuela. But Moni's corazón skips a beat when she spies a strange set of ears - setting her own orejas on alert. Lobo must be near!
In this modern interpretation of a classic fairytale, readers tango along with Moni as she sways to the music that follows her through the woods. In a clearing, Moni stumbles upon Lobo . . . playing a bandoneón? Moni can't help from tap-tap-tapping to the tune, but when the…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.
Of the many retells I have read, this version turns the classic tale on its head the most. With my own reclusive artist tendencies, I found Ra Pu Zel’s wish for alone time to pursue her interests very alluring. I am always curious about new foods and I will set out to find stinky tofu in town, do I follow the smell? The art transports us to a setting with cultural and culinary delights.
A playful, feminist retelling of Rapunzel with a Chinese-cuisine twist
The story of Rapunzel where she’s being locked in a tower by a witch is a good one—but it’s not totally the truth.
The real story is about a young princess in China named Ra Pu Zel who doesn’t want to talk to princes or look proper. What Pu Zel wants is to cook and eat in peace, her long hair neatly braided to keep it out of her food. And when she gets tired of everyone telling her what to do, she locks herself in a tower with her…
As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.
I chuckled with this book because the wolf I imagined was not at all the wolf in the story. I thought it was clever to have him use his big teeth, big claws and big eyes to be crafty, creative and to help others. The illustrator does a great job of contrasting the black lines of the wolf with the colorful yarns to get the right mood across.
What do you see when you imagine a wolf? Sharp, pointy teeth? Big, hungry eyes? A soft sweater and a friendly smile?
Wait a minute!
The wolf in this story would rather knit than huff, puff, or blow anyone's house down. But that doesn't stop the townsfolk from crying wolf anyway. What's a kind-hearted wolf to do when everyone keeps running and screaming at "Hello?" It's time to show the world that this wolf is the furthest thing from Big and Bad.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.
I enjoyed how the characters in this story did not want to be confined to stereotypes, preferring to explore beyond their gender and princely station. They want to explore all their interests, from sewing to pulley building, in their own unique way. I found it hilarious that the “problem” to fix consisted of alligators out of their moat. The illustrations are super fun, with alligators hiding in the silliest places.
The castle is crawling with wayward alligators, and the clueless king doesn't know how to fix it. Lila, Margaret, and Harriet have lots of ideas, but their father won't listen! According to him, the Princesses should be focusing on proper pursuits like drawing, jewelry, and music. When the three girls start falling asleep during the day, the King sends the Prince to investigate .
What he discovers is that the three princesses are gathering at night to use their knowledge of the six simple machines to invent an ingenious alligator removal contraption in their secret workshop.
Absurdity gets a bad rap in fiction and storytelling, I think. “It’s too silly,” they say. But for those who can take a step back and appreciate how absurd our own world is—our everyday life—there’s nothing more real than absurdity. (I’m saying “absurd” an absurd amount of times. Let’s just say it’s purposeful.) It might be played for laughs at times, but if it’s done right, it gives you perspective. Sometimes we all need to look through a funhouse mirror to realize that we’re only human. These five books share that spirit and have made me laugh, think, and occasionally reevaluate my entire life in a spiral of existential dread—with a smile on my face.
For those who don’t know Raphael Bob-Waksberg, he created Bojack Horseman. For those who don’t know Bojack Horseman, watch it immediately—it might be the best-written television show ever.
Bob-Waksberg has an unmatched talent for creating an absolutely nonsensical world and then breaking your heart with the characters living in it. In this collection, he does it again and again, story after story, all about love.
It made me chuckle, then broke me, then somehow put me back together again.
Written with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg delivers a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love—the best and worst thing in the universe.
Featuring:
• A young engaged couple forced to deal with interfering relatives dictating the appropriate number of ritual goat sacrifices for their wedding.
• A pair of lonely commuters who ride the subway in silence, forever, eternally failing to make that longed-for contact.
• A struggling employee at a theme park of U.S. presidents who discovers that love can’t be genetically modified.
I am a mom, like any other mom, raising two young boys with big feelings. Those feelings grow and change and adapt as they age, but they are always strong. My experience raising them has inspired me to seek out books about managing those emotions and to write my own series about finding the joy in the chaos of kids’ “big feelings.”
I love the clever rhymes and hilarious antics in the Pig the Pug books, especially this one. This Halloween-themed story is fun to read over and over again. My sons get the biggest kick out of how naughty Pig the Pug behaves when he confronts the unsuspecting grownups who cross him on Halloween night. (My favorite line might be, “It filled him with feelings that had to be vented.”)
Ultimately, the story teaches kids good manners in the cleverest way by showing how monstrous Pig’s own manners are on Halloween night and the consequences of those actions. (Spoiler alert: the ending involves an upset tummy with disastrous results!)
Pig the Pug celebrates Halloween in this picture book from #1 New York Times bestselling author-illustrator Aaron Blabey.
Pig was a pug
and I'm sorry to say,
on Halloween night
he'd get carried away...
Pig, the world's greediest pug, is on the rampage for TREATS! TREATS! TREATS! But don't even think about being stingy with the goodies, because this candy-fueled glutton has some terrible tricks up his sleeve...
Rich with author-illustrator Aaron Blabey's signature rhyming text and unforgettable illustrations, Pig the Monster is a laugh-out-loud story that follows the eight previous books in the series (Pig the Pug, Pig the…
I grew up in a small, Midwestern town where people sinned Monday through Saturday, then went to church on Sunday to stock up on absolution for the coming week. It was also a place where people wanted to be well-thought of, if thought of at all, and could be at their best when things were at their worst. I wanted to escape as soon as possible, yet now as old memories become more accessible than recent ones, I realize that I never escaped at all. I write about small towns, perhaps to avenge, perhaps as homage; perhaps because it is still, after all these years, what I best know.
Faulkner has great names: Lucius Priest, Boon Hogganbeck, Miss Carrie.
He uses humor to make us like them, heart to make us love them, and a crime they must commit for true justice to prevail. My most recent book follows the same humor, heart, dash of crime roadmap. Faulkner also likes long, complex sentences. I’m no Faulkner, but it’s an affection we share.
One of Faulkner’s comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family’s retainers, to steal his grandfather’s car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests’ black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which they are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba’s bordello in Memphis. From there a series of wild misadventures ensues—involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriffs’ deputies, and jail.
In my early twenties, I worked in a maximum security, Category A men’s prison. I got to know the prisoners, who were usually polite, funny, and, for want of a better word, ‘normal,’ even if guilty of terrible crimes. It made me realize you can’t simply tell if someone is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ by looking at them. It left an indelible mark on me: a fascination with people who lie easily and fool the world. My fascination grew when I became a journalist, but writing fiction has given me the freedom to truly explore liars of all types and try to understand them.
Barbara is a deliciously deceptive, vicious character wrapped in a seemingly mild-mannered 60-year-old woman. I loved how she both hated being overlooked and used her almost invisibility as an older woman, taking advantage of it to manipulate the object of her obsession–the foolish Sheba. When Sheba, a teacher, embarks on an affair with a pupil, it’s the opportunity Barbara has been waiting for.
Reading this book is a little like the cliché about watching a car crash in slow motion because there is an undeniable inevitability about Sheba’s fall from grace and destruction. Yet I couldn’t look away; I was too fascinated. Ultimately, they are two characters who are unpleasant in their unique ways, but they create an irresistible story when combined.
A lonely schoolteacher reveals more than she intends when she records the story of her best friend's affair with a pupil in this sly, insightful novel
Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary existence; aside from her cat, Portia, she has few friends and no intimates. When Sheba Hart joins St. George's as the new art teacher, Barbara senses the possibility of a new friendship. It begins with lunches and continues with regular invitations to meals with Sheba's seemingly close-knit family. But as Barbara and Sheba's relationship develops, another does as well: Sheba has begun a passionate affair with an…
I am a picture book author/illustrator who writes humorous stories. One of my favorite techniques for instilling humor in my writing is for the illustrations to show the reader more than the characters’ know. It’s so much fun for kids to realize and be in on the joke before the characters in the book. I love a storytime where the kids get engaged and start pointing out what’s really happening and start talking to the characters to try to change their actions. I also love a good twist ending that makes the reader say, “How did I not see that coming?!” and these are the perfect kind of books for it.
In this book, three thieves make a plan to dig a tunnel to rob a bank, and I just love a mischievous picture book topic.
The art is so clever because we can see where the thieves are digging and the hilarious mistakes they have made as they end up in places that are definitely not the bank. The art is so charming and the digging teacher is perfection.
Sometimes the real treasures are the people you meet along the way.
Fans of Mac Barnett, Jory John, and Chris Haughton will adore this hilarious story of a bank robbery that doesn't go according to plan. Loosely inspired by the most famous bank heist in Argentina, Joaquin Camp decided to explore what would happen if the thieves had not been successful and had instead been content with what they already have. If instead of arriving at the bank, our thieves had landed in all sorts of other surprising places. The result is a story of upending expectations, teamwork, acceptance, and…
Time travel has always been my favorite genre of storytelling. Devouring every time travel book, movie, TV series, or comic strip I’ve come across in my life got me thinking a lot about cause and effect, chicken and egg, before and after. I eventually came to realize the literary world of prequels and sequels with multiple book series didn’t always have to be read in the order of release, especially if, as a reader, you had a late start that was still “new to you.”
Sequel/prequel/sidequel/timequel: reading a series out of order is a whole new type of adventure.
I’d never heard the term “epistolary novel” prior to reading Michael Kun’s The Locklear Letters, but was immediately smitten with the concept of telling a story solely through a series of letters and/or emails sent by the narrator.
This sequel follows the same template and the same protagonist a decade down the line. I liken it to finding a boxful of letters and using them to piece together a hilarious comedy of errors. Maybe you’ll keep digging and find an older box later, or maybe the archivist kept orderly annals, allowing you to move forward through the years.
Sequencing doesn’t matter, but the written words will leave you in stitches.
Sid Straw, the author of the correspondence that forms Everybody Says Hello, isn t Everyman, but he is someone everyone knows. He tries just a little too hard, says just a little too much, and that extra effort and those extra words are often his undoing. If only Sid could get out of his own way, his life would be wonderful. While Sid Straw may frustrate you at times, you ll end up rooting for him the same way you root for your own equally imperfect friends.
