Genre:  Monsters / Manners / Fantasy / Romance

Year Published: 1990

Year Read:  2010

Publisher:  Farrar Straus Giroux

“Shrek!” is another memorable classic book from the great mind of William Steig and it is about how Shrek, a repulsive ogre, tries to find the princess to marry after he leaves his parents’ home. “Shrek!” is a great book for children who love reading books about monsters.

William Steig has done a great job at both illustrating and writing this modern day fairy tale that is full of attitude. William Steig’s illustrations are truly beautiful and hilarious especially of the images of Shrek himself as he has a green and warty face, a purple shirt and yellow and green striped pants, which make him, look more hilarious than menacing. I also love the images of the trees in this book as they look simplistic yet beautiful, giving this book a somewhat simplistic tone. William Steig makes this story extremely hilarious and full of attitude as Shrek is a character who loves being repulsive and scaring off innocent bystanders, but at the same time, he gives a powerful message to the audience about loving yourself as Shrek loves his own repulsiveness, even if other people do not like his repulsiveness. William Steig makes this book extremely unique as it was one of the few books to have a repulsive character as the main character of the story.



Parents should know that this book does contain the word jack--- and that might offend many parents who do not want their children learning such a word. Even though jack--- is used to describe a donkey in this book, the way that the “a” word is being used now might confuse smaller children and might even entice them to say the word so often. Also, another con of this book is that, in my opinion, it was not as memorable as the movie which is why I gave it a four star rating. Shrek seem more repulsive in this book than he was in the movie and that aspect of his character sort of made him a less likable character in the book, while in the movie, Shrek was a more benevolent ogre who was upset at the way that people treated him and that made him a very likable character in the movie. Also, I felt like the character development was not as strong in this book as it was in the movie and the audience might not feel any kind of bond towards the characters in this book.

“Shrek!” is a great book for children about the importance of being yourself no matter what other people think, but the movie might be a better choice about learning this message since the movie developed the characters much better than this book could. I would recommend this book to children ages six and up due to the use of the word jack---.

Review is also on: Rabbit Ears Book Blog

Friends and Foes is a (mostly) complete recap of Dreamworks' Shrek the Third; I saw mostly because it is a bit more abridged than is justified by the length restriction, in my opinion--it cuts Fiona's pregnancy, the King's on-screen death scene, and Rapunzel's betrayal of the other princesses... the first two of which are pretty damn important to the movie's plot.

Cuts aside, the art is interesting. Instead of matching movie screencaps with words, like the other Shrek the Third picture books I've seen, Friends and Foes translates the 3D CGI art style of the Shrek franchise into a 2D traditional art style. It works rather well, but I noticed that the Ugly Stepsister gets unfortunately gussied up in the transition; she's much more feminine in Friends and Foes than in the movies themselves.

It's another one of those books/reviews when I want to just say, "Watch the movie!" because, frankly, this doesn't add anything to the experience of seeing the film (and it's not a great film to begin with). But I suppose it's a good way to reinforce reading skills for Shrek fans.

Shrek is a terrible ogre who goes out into the world to find adventure (actually he was kicked out into the world by his parents.) Along the way, he meets a witch who says he'll meet a donkey who will take him to a Knight and there he will find a very ugly princess.

I read this because I love, love the Shrek movies. I just had to read the book that started it all.

Shrek is an ogre with an attitude and very much loves that he frightens people. It makes him so happy. I thought the book was interesting, funny and I think the message is a good one. Looks shouldn't really matter. Shrek and the princess are said to be ugly, drawn to be ugly, but they still found love. And love is not all about looks.

Great book. Really enjoyed it.