Karen M. Stegman

Book Summary: In this new twist to a classic fairy tale, Trollerella is a troll who longs to be beautiful. When the Tooth Fairy makes her beautiful for one night, she goes to Prince Charming's ball where he dances with her the whole night long. Both the real Cinderella and Trollerella lose their glass slippers, but the next day when the glass slipper fits Trollerella, Prince Charming sees her as being beautiful even when everyone else sees her as being an ugly troll.

Content Summary: This story deals with the concept of beauty vs. ugliness and how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Children who are not familiar with the story of Cinderella probably won't get as much out of this book as those who are.

Website: http://www.childrenslit.com/childrenslit/th_cinderella.html… (mehr)

I went into reading Trollerella expecting something different, entertaining, and maybe a little innovative...and while it's cute in it's own way, it never really takes off the way I expected it to. Trollerella, once upon a time, used to dream every night of being beautiful and every day she woke up to the same gruesome reflection and right off the bat, I'm not too impressed with the message that this particular version of Cinderella is pushing...sure traditionally she's a beautiful girl who's also charming, hard working, honest and caring to a fault...we don't know if Trollerella is any of these things, all we know is that she wants to be beautiful.

We are also introduced to Victroll, her brother who exploits his trollness and earns many gold pieces from people traveling over his bridge, he's interesting but only a bit player in this tale and serves only to bump the invitation to Prince Charming's party into the well, which leads Trollerella to dump his huge bag of gold into the well, which in turn brings up the tooth fairy who lives there, who in turn grants Trollerella one wish for all the gold all the while admonishing her for not brushing her teeth.

Trollerella doesn't hesitate for a moment and wishes to be beautiful for one night so she can go to the ball and so the tooth fairy makes her appear as a beautiful maiden to anyone who sees her and she's off to the ball, dances with the prince, who is enchanted by her until the another beautiful girl arrives in a pumpkin carriage. Trollerella leaves the party and apparently loses one of her slippers (she's got huge glass one's like that other chick who arrived by pumpkin carriage). The story goes through the usual search and in the end Trollerella makes a deal with the tooth fairy to promise to brush and floss everyday in return for a spell that will make the prince fall in love with her (because the tooth fairy's magic isn't strong enough to make Trollerella beautiful forever). All this despite the fact that the prince doesn't seem particularly taken with her at the dance, it just doesn't really work for me.

Overall I give it three stars, I'd rather that the prince fell in love with her for who she was in the end instead of being magicked into it with a love spell. I'd also have liked if Trollerella was more ok with who she was, as it is we really don't know anything about what kind of "person" she is beyond she wants to be beautiful...she has no redeeming characteristics or personality and that's not really the message I want to be sending to my children. Trollerella had the potential to be a funny, cute, entertaining and interesting take on the traditional Cinderella story, but it never really made it there. About the only redeeming thing I found about this story are the illustrations, they are perfectly cartoon-like and really are fun!… (mehr)