This is certainly a tolerable children's book, better than many. But for someone familiar with and fond of the movie (and aren't we all?) this is quite a disappointment. Generally, I find the book version to be superior to the movie, so, given how much I love the movie version of this story, it was with great anticipation that I finally got around to reading it. Unfortunately, this is one of those rare occasions in which the movie is vastly superior to the book. The book is written in a style not too different from the fairie tales of Hans Christian Anderson (definitely more his than the Brothers Grimm); that is to say, it's very striaghtforward, with little or nothing in the way of style to embellish the basic story. The dialogue is bland, the plot without nuance or embellishment, the characters only a little better than wooden and one-dimensional. Which is okay for a book that is intended purely as a children's story, but given the humor, nuance, and characterization found in the movie which was based on this story, I'd expected more; I'd expected it to be one of those "children's stories" that was still entertaining to an adult. It wasn't.