The Three Billy Goats Gruff
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Instant New York Times bestseller!
The MOMENTOUS debut of a groundbreaking Fairy Tale series -- a brilliantly crafted, hilarious twist on this beloved classic, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, from renowned, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling duo and picture book pioneers Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen!
Once there was a bridge and a terrible and VERY hungry troll lived underneath it. When the three Billy Goats Gruff decide to clip-clop across the bridge to get to the grassy ridge, the troll is already imagining all the way to prepare a delicious goat dinner. But the troll underestimates those seemingly sweet but oh-so-savvy goats! This is the first in a groundbreaking new collection of fractured fairy tales crafted by one of today's most celebrated and acclaimed authors, Mac Barnett, and brought to stunning visual life by award-winning and beloved creator of I Want My Hat Back, Jon Klassen.
Told with pitch perfect timing and pacing, hilarious detail, and Barnett's signature narrator voice, this is Billy Goats Gruff as never before. High-stakes page turns will have readers on the edge of their seats and giggling along, as they join each goat and anticipate the arrival of the hungry and terrible troll living under the bridge. With Klassen's brilliantly restrained scenes, arresting characters, and celebrated artistic style, this first of three fairy tales is destined to be a true publishing event!
With a multitude of Caldecott Medals, Honors, international awards, and New York Times bestsellers to their names both independently and in collaboration, this is a creative pairing that is electric. So get ready to experience picture book magic... all you have to do is cross the bridge!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's hard to imagine a more appropriate pair of picture book rascals to remix this famous fairy tale, a series-starting retelling, than collaborators Barnett and Klassen (The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse). Working in his customary earthen tones, Klassen gives the troll a round schnozz and pointy fangs; his under-the-bridge hideout sports a skull-and-bone mobile. Gleeful grossness abounds as the troll awaits a would-be feast ("All he'd eaten lately was... some goop he'd found in his belly button"), but when the first two ungulate siblings trod the bridge, the troll's elaborate rhyming lines reveal unexpected gastronomic sophistication ("A goat flambé with candied yams./ A goat clambake, with goat, not clams!"). Narrow ribbons of images rise as the pages turn, creating a tidal effect that crowds the text close to the top of later spreads. Meanwhile, the goats' ruse goes just as tradition dictates: the troll falls for each sibling's offer of a larger, tastier brother, building to a turn of gargantuan proportions and a multi-spread, slapstick finale that's guaranteed to elicit raucous fun and repeat performances: "Who seeks to reach the grassy ridge?/ Who dares to walk across my bridge?" Ages 4–8.
