Cinderella’s Dress- Nancy Willard

Cinderella sliding down a staircase is not your typical Cinderella story. The cursive font and the light girly colors are the typical elements that one is used to seeing in a fairy tale book. This story is a Modern Fantasy spin-off of the original Cinderella fairy tale. The bright yellow sleeve gives the reader a feeling of happiness and hope for a happily ever after ending. The dedication page was creative because it dedicated the book to a lady “who knows a good dress when she sees one.” Reading that page started me off thinking about how this book was going to be based on dresses. The illustrations in this book were filled with a great amount of detail. Word for word what was listed in the story was found in the illustrations. If I were reading this to a class, I would have them pay attention to the images and see if they could find what the author talked about. Especially on the first page when the two magpies are sitting in their birds nest. Because this version of Cinderella has a lot of focus on dress-making I would have my students create a costume of their own. There are lessons that can be taught about reading through designing an outfit of a costume. If I were to have a unit on fairy tales, I would have my class write their own version in scrip form and then make costumes to perform for the class. By doing this, the class would have a better understanding on what the Modern Fantasy genre is.