Book of the Week: The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales
Our reading last week of Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith's hilarious Cowboy and Octopus led us to re-read our copy of their earlier book, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales
I happened upon The Stinky Cheese Man at, of all places, the de Young Museum store (which has a fantastic selection of children's books, by the way). Of course I'm going to take a look at any book titled The Stinky Cheese Man, so I did, and subsequently found myself laughing out loud in the store, which resulted in a few funny looks being thrown my way. Anyhow, I decided it was a worthwhile addition to our library and immediately purchased it.
The Stinky Cheese Man presents its fractured fairy tales linked together by the snarky narration of Jack, of Jack and the Beanstalk fame. While his connecting commentary is pretty funny, the individual stories can also be read on their own if a shorter storytime is desired. Tales include "The Really Ugly" Duckling (who grows up to be just a really ugly duck), "Cinderumpelstiltskin", "Little Red Running Shorts", and of course the titular "Stinky Cheese Man", who's just like the gingerbread man, only he's made of stinky cheese (with two pimento-stuffed olives for eyes and bacon for a mouth) and nobody really wants to catch him, because, well, he's too stinky.
Be warned, there are no lessons to be learned and no morals to the stories in The Stinky Cheese Man—it's just non-stop irreverant one-liners and gags, coupled with chaotic and colorful illustrations. The style of humor is not for everybody; the tone is often pretty sarcastic, and many of the jokes will appeal more to parents than to kids. Needless to say, we think it's pretty darn funny. There are very few children's books that have us all laughing out loud and this is one of them.
Get it from your local library, book store, or Amazon.com
