Sleeping Ugly (Jane Yolen)

Hilarious writer Jane Yolen takes the classic fairy tale and turn it around with this story about a princess named Miserella, who is beautiful, no matter what mood she's in. Despite her looks, Miserella simply is terrible on the inside. One day, she is in such a particularly nasty mood that she runs away on her horse and ends up lost in the middle of the woods. While lost in the forest, she encounters an old fairy and a girl named Plain Jane, who isn't much to look at on the outside, but on the inside she's sweet and charming. But then the fairy casts a spell targeted toward Princess Miserella, and it backfires, putting them all into a deep sleep, the kind that needs a prince's kiss to save them. Fortunately for them, a prince finds them. But who will he choose to awaken? This book has silly illustrations by Diane Stanley that match the story with their unique, but fairy-tale-ish, look. Don't judge a book by its cover is the moral of this story - there's no doubt about it - and this makes it a great book for kids to read. Yolen has written more than 170 books; other titles include "How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?" "How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?" "Briar Rose," "Miz Berlin Walks" and "Naming Liberty."