There's a donkey and a dragon, a guarded princess, but the movie was a lot better and spared me the doggerel. ( )

I AM CRYING TEARS OF JOY, PAIN, AND HILARITY. Best kid's book ever. It reads like a giant shitpost and I LOVE IT. ( )

What the heck is even going on in this book? ( )

I was a huge fan of the film Shrek when it came out, but I can’t believe that I didn’t know until this year that it was loosely based on this book - and on a book by one of my childhood authors, none the less! Obviously the film version extrapolates the story of Shrek the ogre’s escapades, painting him as a baddie with a heart of gold, but Steig’s original ogre is a much more fearsome character. His Shrek revels in frightening the populace, even down to the trees and plants, and shows absolutely no remorse for his frightening facade, whereas the Shrek from the film is only fierce in response to the negative attitude he elicits from those he meets and is truly a simple ogre wishing to live a quiet life in his swamp. Regardless of his more frightening features and behaviour, Stieg’s Shrek sets out on a quest after his fortune is read by a forest witch, determined to find the donkey of destiny, defeat the dragon, and marry the princess. The donkey in this story plays a relatively small role (“noble steed” would describe this donkey much better than Eddie Murphy’s miniature rendition), and Shrek defeats the dragon through sheer brute strength, but the story hits a high point when he meets the princess. Unlike the lovely Princess Fiona, this princess is equal in ugliness to Shrek, causing him to fall madly in love at first sight! Even though this ending doesn’t really give us the satisfaction of seeing Shrek and Princess Fiona accept their green and ogre-y selves as in the film, this ugly pair is still an amusing example of true love and expounds the same message - there’s someone for everyone, as long as you keep looking and stay true to yourself! ( )

This has been on my 'to read' list ever since the first movie came out... (yeah, I'm slow).
And although I didn't really expect anything like the Pixar movie story, this still took me a bit by surprise. But in a good way.
William Steig's story is delightfully horrendous and wondful love story, and I'm sure the kids will love it, after I can explain that, no, this is not the movie-Shrek, this is the original.... ( )