Silly Stories for Children: Why All at Once Upon a Time Shines

All hail the silly illustrated book. We reviewed a great silly book the other week, but it’s never too soon to read the silly again. Much like the well-respected Ministry of Silly Walks, a silly book is mandatory for carpet-time readers and the read-aloud crowd. All at Once Upon a Time is peak silly. To older audiences, it could be viewed as an absurd upending of fairytale tropes that most audiences can quote ad infinitum. Younger audiences who don’t know the tropes will enjoy All at Once Upon a Time because of the energy and laughter it produces from the things they thought would happen.

When you lie your nose gets longer. The girl with the red hood is walking through the forest to see her grandmother. The giant who lives in the clouds doesn’t like visitors. The wolf blows as hard as he can at the house in the woods where the pigs live. The end of the story has the characters all living happily ever after.  Adults know these tropes. I think elementary kids of a certain age know these clichés also, and can spot them like a leopard.

All at Once Upon a Time sounds like the ill-conceived sequel to Everything Everywhere All at Once, starring the legend of cinema James Hong. It’s not, although this illustrated book has some similarities to that absurdist drama starring another legend of cinema Michelle Yeoh. Instead, this is an absurd, silly look at the tropes young children are exposed to during carpet time or read-aloud time. If you’re a parent going to be the guest reader to their child’s elementary-aged classroom this is the book that you need. It will wake them up and elicit just the right amount of laughter without the class going sideways.

The book starts by asking readers to tell if this is a story that they’ve heard before. The princess with the longest nose is locked up inside the tower. Her nose grows even longer because she’s not locked in the tower, she just can’t find the key because her room is so messy. The prince climbs the beanstalk to save her but instead goes all the way to the clouds where the giant has bowls of food. He eats some of it, is given an apple by the giant, which immediately allows the prince to fall into a deep well. The giant goes for a walk in the woods where he meets a little girl with a red hood and a basket full of frogs.

The pages start and stop with such cliffhangers, and staccato that audiences will be expecting a big twist every fourth page. This is not a bad thing when you consider that the audience is made up of ages five through nine who might see story time as that boring period before the end of the day. Nay, to those students who think like that, All at Once Upon a Time scoffs in their direction, upends the fairytale norms and dares to be really silly. Those younger ages will look bemused the first time they hear the punch lines in the book. The second time they hear the book they’ll grin with anticipation. The third time the clever kids will softly whisper the punch line to their early elementary brethren who haven’t memorized it yet in an attempt to be that kid.

Written by Mara Rockliff with illustrations by Gladys Jose, All at Once Upon a Time makes the most out of every page. Its illustrations are bright, comical, stretch corner-to-corner, and occasionally require readers to turn the book vertically in order to enjoy the movement. When the prince falls into the well you need to turn it vertically so that you can see the well’s interior as he’s meeting his watery timeout. The same effect also plays nicely when the beanstalk is being climbed. Your young readers want silly, this brings the silly in spades. Ages five through nine who want a read aloud book that seems familiar but is entirely wacky need to find All at Once Upon a Time. It’ll reward their silly quest with goofy humor, simple text and illustrations that go where they’re not expecting.

All at Once Upon a Time is by Mara Rockliff with illustrations by Gladys Jose and is available on Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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