Cenicienta: La Novela Grafica

by Jeffrey Stewart Timmins (Illustrator), Beth Bracken (Retold by)

Overview

Cinderella's wicked stepmother won't let her go to the ball. But with a little help from a Fairy Godmother, she'll be getting there in style. There's just one catch. At midnight, her magical gown will turn back into dirty old rags.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781434222701
Publisher:	Capstone
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Series:	Graphic Spin en Español
Edition description:	Spanish-language Edition
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	659,693
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.30(d)
Language:	Spanish
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

About the Author

Beth Bracken is an award-winning author of books for children of all ages, from her Mom's Choice-winning Henry Helps books for toddlers to the critically acclaimed Faerieground series for middle-grade readers. Her picture book Too Shy for Show-and-Tell was one of the 2013 Bank Street Best Children's Books of the Year in the Under-Five category. Beth lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and their two children.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers learned a long time ago that they can make a quick buck off cheaply made retellings of classic (i.e.: out-of-copyright) fairy tales. As a result, librarians are automatically wary of a publisher who releases a spate of new fairy tale adaptations. Well, you don’t have to be wary of these books. Stone Arch has put its best foot forward with this new line of graphic novel adaptations of fairy tales, books that succeed on every front. The ones I’ve listed above are my particular favorites, but I haven’t seen a bad book in this new line. Cenicienta, a Spanish-language retelling of the familiar Cinderella story, is a fine example. The book is bound in a sturdy yet attractive library edition, and the high-quality paper makes the painted colors leap off the page, as for example in a panel featuring the brilliant glow from within a magical coach headed toward a certain legendary ball. The translations are also strong, with natural word choice and dialogue that pays attention to the nuances of class as the poor and the wealthy speak to one another. With these stylish new fairy tale adaptations, Stone Arch has reset the standard

Teacher Librarian Magazine

The Spanish teacher at my school is the wonderful, fabulous, talented Courtney Rayburn. She and I were enjoying this Stone Arch version of Cinderella today while her class of Spanish students were in the library checking out and using the website www.StudySpanish.com We don’t really have a lab available to support the needs of our Spanish class, so once every two weeks, her students are able to take advantage of BuildaBurrito and StudySpanish. Most of these students have tested out of taking reading during their 8th grade year so they are assigned to take high school Spanish instead. (If you are wondering about this, so am I. It doesn’t make sense to me to stop teaching reading in 8th grade when they are going to have four years of Reading/English in high school, but remember, I’m not in charge of the world.) The Spanish teacher and I work together to provide opportunities for her high achieving groups to have access to books and magazines. We want to help them continue to love to read and to learn. Frequently we review bilingual titles and those in only Spanish. The teacher and I both love the dark illustrations of this version of the fairy tale Cinderella and agreed the illustrations were definitely appropriate for high school and middle school students learning Spanish. While the story is familiar, there are plenty of words in Spanish that neither of us knew and had to research, too. (Google Translator is my friend.) Her students now groan when she puts comic strips up on the screen in Spanish since the vocabulary is more difficult to read. I love providing her with more material that can help connect links between English and Spanish. Three of my favorite new phrases are: “¡Recuerda regresar antes de la medianoche!” – Remember back before midnight El hada madrina – The fairy godmother La Malvada Madrastra – The Wicked Stepmother Other titles in this series include Caperucita Roja: Red Riding Hood, Frijoles Magicos: Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel y Gretel: Hansel and Gretel, La Bella y La Bestia: Beauty and the Beast, and Rumpelstiltskin (same in English and in Spanish). I believe these are good acquisitions for our Spanish collection and to support the Spanish classroom collections. The words flow well and are not terribly difficult, yet are culturally more responsive with the tone from wealthy and peasant characters. Enjoy. http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/practicallyparadise/2011/05/12/cenicienta-la-novela-grafica/

Practically Paradise blog

Gr 3–6—This graphic novel, which begins by telling of a heart broken many years ago, is a retelling of the Grimms' version of the fairy tale with a few changes along the way, such as a tree that grows on Cinderella's mother's grave that plays a pivotal role. The story is concisely written, using fairly basic vocabulary. It contains somewhat dark, solemn pen sketches instead of the chameleonlike expressions from sadness to elation and then to despair found among illustrations in some of the more commercialized versions of the tale. The emotions depicted here are mostly muted and subdued. Each page has a multiframe layout with legibly printed dialogue bubbles. There is a list of characters at the beginning and biographical information about the author and illustrator, a glossary of some of the more complex words in the story, a history of the fairy tale, and discussion questions and writing points at the end. Children familiar with the story will enjoy this interesting new spin on it.—Rhonda Jeffers, Coweta Public Library System, Newnan, GA

School Library Journal