The Hinky-Pink: An Old Tale

By George Albert Brown and Megan McDonald

Book Overview

A happy Hinky-Pink is a fine thing. An unhappy Hinky-Pink pinches ! That is what happens to Anabel, a young seamstress in Old Italy who has only days to finish her dream: sewing a gown for the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689875886
• ISBN13: 9780689875885
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books
• Length: 48 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Great illustrations!

Brian Floca is one of our favorite illustrators - this book really shows off his stuff!

Tiny little pink-haired problems

A good original fairy tale is a hard creature to conjure. To come up with a story of appropriate length, charm, and originality often requires that its author be ready to do a little research and a little digging in ye olde history files. Megan McDonald is a former children's librarian and storyteller, though you probably know her better for her Judy Moody stories than anything else. But as a storyteller, she has acquired a fine ear for a tellable tale. Of course the appeal of The Hinky Pink is that it isn't wholly reliant on the fact that few of us have heard this story of a mischievous little magical critter. No, between McDonald's brisk and catchy telling and Brian Floca's evocative settings and funny images, Hinky Pink is what they call in the business a charmer. An all new retelling of a story that is bound to be beloved, always assuming that enough people go out and find it. Anabel is just a simple seamstress living out her days in her tiny room in Old Italy. She longs to someday make gowns and sew delicate fabrics fit for a princess. Not that she's ever seen one before, but she's sure they're all delicate and lovely. Anabel unexpectedly has her wish granted when the resident princess, one Isabella Caramella Gorgonzola, ruins her best gown with a well-placed raspberry tart. She tells the seamstress that she has only one week to produce the mother of all gowns. One, "the color of a ruby snowbird's wing. With sequins that glitter like sparkleberries and stitches as lacey as snowflakes." Fair enough. Yet the room in which Anabel is to stay while she creates this marvel is haunted by a sprite called a hinky pink. Every night when she goes to fall asleep the hinky pink pinches her and throws her covers to the four corners of the room. Local nursemaid Mag tells Anabel that the creature will only be appeased if the girl makes it its own little bed. Yet making the perfect bed is by no means easy, and as the night of the ball grows closer Anabel will have to find a way to appease not only a hudgin, as Mag calls it, but a cranky princess as well. McDonald has culled her tale from Margery Bailey's The Bed Just So in Whistle for Good Fortune and from Jean B. Hardendorff's retelling. There are certain expectations a small child has when they are read a fairy tale. These expectations can be lined up neatly in a row as follows: If there is a poor girl at the beginning . .she will be rich by the end. If she does not have a husband . . . . . . she will have one by the end. If she meets a princess who is not saintly . . . that princess will be punished by the end. If she is a seamstress . . . . . . .she will BE the princess by the end. See? Simple rules but we've seen them followed so meticulously over the years that I was wholly unprepared for McDonald's own story. There's a certain distinctly American expectation that if you start a story out as a poor seamstress, even if you enjoy your work you are going to be introduced to greater grander things by t

Ages 4-8 will relish this story

Ages 4-8 will relish this story of a Hinky-Pink and a young seamstress in Old Italy who has only days to finish a beautiful grown for the princess to wear at the Butterfly Ball. A Hinky-Pink's unhappiness threatens the making of the gown, giving many pinches to express its dismay, in this story of supernatural influence.