SNORING BEAUTY

A mouse in his house—which is also Sleeping Beauty’s castle—attempts to get a full night’s sleep before his wedding but is stymied by the great wracking snores of the princess herself.

Mouse eagerly lets a prince named Max in, but the prince does not fancy kissing a snoring Beauty. Together, man and mouse hold her nose, pour water on her and tickle her feet to no avail. In desperation, Mouse puckers up and kisses her himself, and she wakes in time to get a kiss from Max. All this is illustrated in splashy watercolors that integrate a wide array of onomatopoeia to represent snoring (“SNOOOOGA-SNOOOOOM,” “KA-RENCHHHHH”); human and mouse physiognomies both sport very long noses. Mouse’s (and Max’s) eventual success is short-lived: Mouse discovers after their double wedding that he has not escaped the sounds of snoring after all. What is clearly intended to be silly is, alas, not light enough to make the grade. Max is not interested in anything but Beauty’s crown and castle, Mouse is revolted by kissing a human, and the treatment of Beauty while she is sleeping borders on the cruel if not unusual. It’s all presented in rhyme (ABCCB) in a typeface that is pretty but not as easily read as it might be.

Snore.