#15 – Goldie Locks has Chicken Pox

Goldie Locks has Chicken Pox

Written by: Erin Dealey

Illustrated by: Hanako Wakiyama

Scholastic

2002

28 Pages

Traditional Literature

This book is a fun twist on the traditional story of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. In this book Goldie Locks is sick with the chicken pocks. The story introduces tons of other tradition characters who come to visit poor Goldie. For example, Little Bo Peep, Jack Be Nimble, and little Red Riding Hood show up to see Goldie Locks. Goldie’s mother even makes a phone call to the house of the three bears. Goldie can’t get any rest with all these people showing up and her little brother driving her crazy. Goldie’s brother terrorizes her until she just can’t take it anymore. Then she notices three red dots appearing on his face. Now her brother has the chicken pox, and she knows that she is about to get her revenge.

            The illustrations are rendered in oil and paint. The first thing I noticed was that the pictures reminded me of fifties cartoon advertising. The colors, patterns, clothes, furniture and characters are all styled like they belonged in the fifties. The backgrounds are mostly white, and the main colors used are blue, red, and yellow. The outlines are thin and done in brown instead of a very harsh black. It adds to the innocence of the illustrations. The text is informal and the illustrations take up one to two pages fully.

            This book is a very cute book to have in an early elementary library. It would make a great read-aloud to go along with a writing activity. The students could create a class story using all of their favorite traditional characters. They could come up with creative ways to combine each of their stories. This book also contains a lot of rhymes. This book would make a great story for a lesson on rhyming words. It would also be a great lesson to use for characters. There are many different types of characters introduced, and students could identify the different types.