Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl

• Title: Revolting Rhymes
• Author: Roald Dahl
• Publishing: Puffin Books, Reprint Edition. September 3rd, 2009. 
• Synopsis: The book Revolting Rhymes by Roal Dahl is a collection of six traditional stories including  Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and The Three Little Pigs. However, these stories have been given a funny re-interpretation and have been put into verse by the author. 
• The book is written in poetic style with verse and rhyme that gives the story a song like quality that makes it flow. In addition, the drawings used in the book by Quentin Blake have the appearance of being drawn in by colored pencils, which makes the artwork unique and memorable. 
• In reading this book, I thoroughly enjoyed the comedic twist in each retelling of the traditional classic and thought that using these stories in the classroom would have children laughing and excited about poetry which makes this book a great book for classroom use. My one criticism of the book would be the graphicness of the repeated line about taking a gun out of knickers and using it to shoot others. For this reason, I would have to be careful about using this book in my future classroom and would only be able to use this story in the older grades, having addressed the line with my students. 
• While reading this book, an obvious lesson idea that jumped out to me was to read the traditional fairy tales as well as the re-written ones in this book, and have my students compare and contrast the plot and writing styles of the two stories. I also thought it would make an interesting lesson to have the students do a reader's theatre day where they formed groups to retell the stories in a play for their classmates and they would create their own props and perform them on a makeshift stage at the front of the classroom. 
• In exploring the internet for more lesson ideas and activity supplements from Roald Dahl's website. On there you can find audio clips from Roald Dahl himself giving writing tips as well as pictures from the Roald Dahl museum. Both of which would be good ways to get students intersted in writing and the author. His website can be found here: http://www.roalddahl.com/home 
• I also found some good story reading on YouTube that include picture that may be a nice change of pace to the usual story reading format. Here is a link to one of the six read stories online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5DS2DnsJ04