Sleeping Beauty: A Mid-century Fairy Tale

Lynn Roberts's Sleeping Beauty: A Mid-century Fairy Tale is the old story retold for 6 year olds, with a heroine who'd much rather read about robots than wait for a prince.

What happens

Annabel lives with her two aunts, Rosalind and Flora. She loves science fiction. She reads space books, watches films about robots and dreams of seeing what the world will be like in the future.

What she doesn't know is that she's under a spell. At her first birthday party, a spiteful neighbour called Morwenna (a witch, of course) cursed her. Before her sixteenth birthday is over, she'll prick her finger on a needle and die.

Flora is a good witch. She can't take the spell away, but she can change it. So instead of dying, Annabel will sleep for a thousand years. Rosalind hides every needle in the house.

You'll probably know roughly where this is going. The fun is in spotting what's different. This time the needle isn't on a spinning wheel at all, and it's a lovely surprise when you realise what it is.

Then the story leaps a very long way forward, to a girl called Zoe who loves history as much as Annabel loves the future. She's curious about an enormous rose tree that has stood in the same spot for as long as anyone can remember.

It's short and it moves fast. There's a proper race against the clock at the end (Zoe has only a few hours until midnight), and the ending is warm and a bit funny.

It's lovely that the two girls are opposites. One has always wished she could see the future. The other has always wished she could see the past. Can you guess what happens when they meet?

If your reader already knows the classic fairy tale, they'll get a real kick out of the changes. If they don't, it's a gentle first go at a very old story, with no prince required.

What to read next

If they like a fairy tale with a twist, Little Red is by the same author and opens with exactly the same first line. This time the hero is a boy called Thomas, and a keg of ginger beer turns out to be very useful indeed.