*Starred Review* There are plenty of books that showcase a Cinderella from a particular country, but this beautifully conceived offering by Newbery Medal-winner Fleischman moves the story from culture to culture with a turn of the page; Cinderella goes from eating  pan dulce in Mexico and receiving figs and apricots from a fairy in Iran to being handed rice from Grandfather Snake in India. Cinderella herself morphs from an Irish maiden into a Zimbabwean beauty in robe and headress. And when she runs away from the ball, she leaves behind a glass slipper, a diamond anklet, or a sandal of gold. From concept to execution, this is a sophisticated piece of artistry. Drawing on traditional textiles for inspiration, Paschkis' folk-style art is a mastery of design. Using unexpected colors (tomato, navy, maroon) and pearls of detail unique to the individual countries, her images invite readers to look and look some more. The telling (framed by a mother reading to her daughter) needs introduction, but children old enough to understand the concept of one story transversing many lands will be fascinated.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2007 Booklist

Beneath its handsome William Morris-like cover art, this inspired retelling blends many versions of Cinderella into a single, extraordinary tale. As Newbery Medalist Fleischman's (Joyful Noise) strong storytelling voice incorporates sometimes small details from different traditions, text and illustrations nimbly morph from one Cinderella story to the next, creating this brand-new version. Paschkis (Yellow Elephant) makes use of folk art and textile patterns throughout the world in the clever background paintings behind each of her vibrant panel illustrations, and she helpfully and unobtrusively labels the country from which relevant borrowings originate. Generally, each page focuses on a single country's contributions, but even when details from several countries share a spread, visual harmony prevails and characters remain recognizable despite their costume changes. When Cinderella has nothing to wear, for example, "a crocodile swam up to the surface-and in its mouth was a sarong made of gold [Indonesia]... a cloak sewn of kingfisher feathers [China]... a kimono red as sunset [Japan]." Even the last line of text is patched from several sources: "Such a wedding it was, and such an adoring couple [Iraq]... and such a wondrous turn of events [Korea]... that people today are still telling the story." Paschkis emphasizes the storyteller's voice by beginning and ending the narrative with illustrations of a mother reading to her daughter-a daughter who, appropriately, looks much like Cinderella herself. Ages 5-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(Primary, Intermediate) As the author reminds us in a note, "Cinderella" is an ancient and (with "more than a thousand" versions) well-nigh universal story. To dramatize this, he's snipped thirty-six bits from seventeen different cultures worldwide, retold them with an ear tuned to their various flavors, and strung them into one continuous tale. The result is a kaleidoscope not only of storytelling styles but of ethnic and cultural details: "The King declared he would marry the golden shoe's owner" (China) and "the magistrate...took the straw sandal in his hand" (Korea); "The guests feasted on mangoes and melons" (Zimbabwe), "rice seasoned with almonds" (India), "beef stew and lamb stew" (Ireland), "anise cookies and custards" (Mexico). It's a credit to Fleischman's narrative skill that he manages to maintain continuity and coherence throughout. Following along with marvelous ingenuity, Paschkis incorporates decorative folkloric motifs into backgrounds that pair the same harmonious colors each time a country reappears (yellow on green for the West Indies, shades of lavender for France); in inset illustrations, Cinderella's long, dark hair is recognizable through multiple changes of costume. In words and art, a graphic and inspiring demonstration of humanity's common themes, as well as its rich diversity. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

K-Gr 4-Capitalizing on the frequently made assertion that Cinderella is the most widely told folktale on earth, Fleischman and Paschkis have created a pan-cultural, universally pleasing interweaving of variants from 17 distinct cultures. This clever books reads nearly seamlessly and somehow manages to convey simultaneously the essential sameness of the story and the particularities of the different versions. Dressing for the royal shindig, our heroine, "-looked in her mother's sewing basket (Laos). Then she reached into the hole in the birch tree (Russia). Then a crocodile swam up to the surface-and in its mouth was a sarong made of gold (Indonesia)-a cloak sewn of kingfisher feathers (China)-a kimono red as sunset (Japan)." Paschkis's backgrounds to the text and gouache illustrations alert readers to the shifts in locale by the use of color-coding and of folk-art design motifs drawn from each culture until the final scene where costumes, dances, music, and cuisines from across the globe convene at a wedding so wondrous "that people today are still telling the story." Endings don't get any happier than in this global tour de force.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

WHOM would you invite to a dinner party if it could be anyone in the history of the world? Forget Copernicus and Karl Marx. Think of people who would actually be fun: the storytellers. They had their fingers on the pulse - the desires, customs and gossip - of their day and could spin a great yarn to boot. Reading Paul Fleischman and Julie Paschkis's elegantly rendered "Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella," we can imagine that storytellers from all over the globe played the greatest party game of all, weaving one big, beautiful story encompassing all of their homelands and eras. Multicultural Cinderella anthologies already fill classroom shelves, but this worthy contribution from Fleischman, known for award-winning children's books like "Seedfolks" and "Weslandia," cleverly reveals the overlapping elements of the stories by patching 17 versions together to make one cohesive narrative. Cinderella eats pan dulce one moment, accepts a sarong from a crocodile the next, then wears glass slippers (or diamond anklets, or gold sandals) to the ball. She travels by breadfruit-turned-coach and by galloping mare. Fleischman's prose is simple and the story familiar. Still, there are small surprises on every page, like this part from Indonesia: "All night the girl danced with the headman's son, until the first rooster crowed." As Fleischman explains in an author's note, the story took on the trappings of its surroundings, from its first-recorded rendering in about the ninth century, in China, to the more than 1,000 known versions worldwide. (The French version by Charles Perrault, with the glass slippers and coachmen-mice, is the one most American readers know.) The themes that have made the story relevant around the world - good overcoming evil, love trumping hate and jealousy - are alive here. Many versions suggest a belief in protective natural forces, like the cow pouring honey from its horns (Russia), Godfather Snake offering rice (India) and the sparrows helping Cinderella with her chores (Germany). Paschkis's luminous gouache paintings - hyperactive watercolors - depict brightly colored figures in traditional dress. Her subtly visible brushstrokes and the two-dimensionality of her characters suggest folk art. As the story jumps around the globe, sometimes three or more times on one page, her images make it easy for the reader to keep track. Specific colors and symbols for each place (green with Celtic-inspired vines for Ireland, red with lanterns and pagodas for China) make some pages look like lovely strips of fabric sewn together. And so you don't have to guess, the name of the country is painted in, too. While the colors create visual boundaries within the text, Paschkis's consistent style unites the illustrations. Mimicking batik, she leaves a pale underlayer of paint visible to form the people, animals and symbols, while a darker color fills in the space between them. When the Zimbabwean king announces his search for a wife, Paschkis shows three women walking to the palace wearing long gowns edged with geometric shapes and scarves wrapped high on their heads. Framing them, a brown and orange backdrop shows the king on his throne surrounded by watchful African animals. The final spread, of Cinderella's wedding to the king, depicts a United Nations crowd, suggesting the unity of cultures across languages, customs, borders. RACHEL ISADORA brings old folklore to life with a different approach. Her streamlined retelling of an unappealing Grimm fairy tale, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," leaves the story basically unchanged, but her illustrations give it a face-lift - a new home under African skies. In the story, a king locks up his 12 beautiful daughters but finds that their shoes are worn through every morning. With the help of a stranger's advice and an invisibility cloak, an old soldier solves the mystery of the tattered shoes - the young women sneak away to a nightly underground dance party with their 12 princes - and wins the hand of the eldest daughter. The message, whatever it is, is hardly uplifting. (Girls shouldn't have too much fun?) In a story lacking emotional pull or sympathetic characters, the most memorable part is the appearance of the invisibility cloak; it is also featured in the Brothers Grimm version, thus dating it back to B.P.E. (Before the Potter Era). Still, Isadora, who won a Caldecott Honor for "Ben's Trumpet," about a boy who dreams of becoming a jazz musician, rescues the text with bright, crisp collages reminiscent of Eric Carle's work. Like Paschkis, Isadora uses ornate textiles as cultural symbols. Some dancers wear detailed, realistic renderings of African fabrics in a range of styles: yellow, blue and brown zigzags; delicate, interlocking purple diamonds; thin stripes in brown and black. Others wear bold gowns painted with thick, textured brushstrokes. Their radiant faces, often shown in perfect profile, have dramatic skin tones, complicated striations of brown, yellow, orange or black. Isadora's dynamic, crowded scenes, often mounted on simple white backgrounds, spill over the edges of each two-page spread. Even a quiet illustration of the soldier resting alone in his room seems larger than life, as if we are lying right next to him. Though the story will not inspire, children will delight in Isadora's lively illustrations. "Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal" carries us back in time to see where the Cinderella story has been, presenting a richly layered feast for the eyes and mind. Isadora delivers a lavish new setting for "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," but offers no new insights. Rebecca Zerkin is a literacy teacher at Public School 9 in Manhattan.

A gem of a book shines a light on the multifaceted Cinderella. The familiar tale begins in Mexico, continues in Korea, then Iraq, until 17 variants, from Appalachia to Zimbabwe, unfold the story in sequence. Thus, familiar motifs--glass slippers (France), lentils thrown in ashes (Germany)--share space with strikingly different ones: Godfather Snake (India), a breadfruit coach (the West Indies). Fleischman blends the different versions skillfully, adopting an Irish lilt here, an Appalachian twang there, pacing the telling brilliantly to accommodate the shifts in culture without sacrificing the tale's narrative tension. Paschkis places brightly painted folk-art vignettes in panels against backdrops inspired by the textiles of the cultures represented. Her frame, of a mother and daughter reading the book together, ties the lush presentation up in a bow. Richly colored endpapers feature a map of the world, the regions where the tales originate indicated clearly. For anyone who ever thought they'd seen enough of Cinderella, here's an offering that, in celebrating both its universality and specificity, makes the old tale new again. (Picture book/folklore. 4-10) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.