Leaping Beauty

Who better to wreak havoc with eight beloved fairy tales than Gregory Maguire, the brilliant, funny, and nationally best-selling author of the adult novel Wicked as well as the hilarious middle-grade series The Hamlet Chronicles. Zany animals of all species run through these fractured fairy tales with alarming speed and dexterity. Who would have thought that the ageless, exquisite Cinderella could be recast as the silly story of an enormous yet lovable elephant who plods along to the ball with glass pie plates on her feet; or that Sleeping Beauty, that most regal of all fairy tales, could be twisted into the story of a frog with the most unusual and promising dance career? Get ready to meet a gorilla queen and a psycho chimp, seven giant giraffes, and one very bad walrus. Gregory Maguire is the author of a number of best-selling adult novels, including Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, as well as numerous children's books, including the hilarious Hamlet Chronicles. While writing Leaping Beauty and Other Animal Fairy Tales, Mr. Maguire sadly became allergic to all creatures great and small. Now he lives in a house without pets, though he is the father of three happy, noisy, small children to whom, at this writing, he has not yet developed allergies.