This is a cute, modernized version of the traditional Sleeping Beauty story, which has a uniquely shaped board book and beautiful graphics. My daughter and I loved it!

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A book with a fun construction, and a decent retelling of the commonly-known legend. The most noticeable thing is that the pages increase in size as the book goes along – we start with the image and the text squished onto a small piece of diecut board, but the spread behind that is taller, and the one behind that is taller still, etc, until the last page is the only full-sized one. A strong aesthetic, accentuating the green and purples, helps the visual side of things, and where I thought the text might increase each time with the expanded space allowed to it, no – it sticks to one friendly little sentence or so each time. The PC brigade will appreciate that the prince is of a different ethnicity to the sleeping princess, and only blows her a kiss to kick off the happy ending. Kids will much more eagerly take on board the curved page-edges, and the building up of the layers, as examples of wonderful things that can be done with books. Four and a half stars.

A classic fairy tale in neon world

Although the story is that of the well-known Sleeping Beauty, characters are a real celebration of diversity: Sleeping Beauty is not the slimmest I have seen and has tattooed arms, people are of different races, and they live in a striking neon coloured world. Exciting, modern and dynamic. We have found this picture book cool.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing.