Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

Retold By and Illustrated By: Mo Willems

HarperCollins Publishers, 2012

28 Pages

Fantasy 

     I chose this book, because the title interested me.  I was curious as to how the story was retold.  The story is about a group of three dinosaurs that decide to make up a scheme to lure a little boy or girl into their house and trap them.   They prepare the house by making some chocolate, and then set out to wait on a little boy or girl to appear in the woods.  Then, they see a little girl; her name is Goldilocks.  Goldilocks finds the dinosaur’s house; she walks right inside with no sense of danger.  She finds some pudding that the dinosaurs have made.  Goldilocks winds up eating all three bowls that the dinosaurs prepared.   After eating, she tries to sit in a chair, but she can’t reach them; then, she realizes that there must be something she doesn’t know.  Right after she starts thinking about this, the dinosaurs come back home.  She overhears them talking about their plans, so she runs out of the house.  The dinosaurs rushed inside, but they didn’t make it in time; Goldilocks had gotten away!

     The illustrations in this book are drawn and painted.  They are outlined in black.  The lines emphasize things in the story, such as the dinosaur characters, or the bowls of pudding.  The illustrator/author does a wonderful job providing the audience with pictures that go along with the story really well.  The proportion sizes between the dinosaurs and Goldilocks is easily shown by the size of the counters, chairs, pudding bowls, and bed for the dinosaurs.  Showed how much larger the dinosaurs were than Goldilocks.  Overall, the artist did great!  The pictures help the reader to visualize what happens in the story.

     I think this book would be great for teaching the sequence of events in a story.  I could have a picture of each part in the story, and have my students match the words that tell what is happening.  I could also have a long paper strip where they just the put pictures in order.  I could also do a story map, after I read the book.  Characterization would also be a good lesson for this book.  I would probably do an activity with the characters where they match information about each character in the story to a picture of the character.  I think this story is most appropriate for kindergarten through second grade.