Age 4-8

Hughes’s latest picture book is a retelling of Cinderella, set in the 1930s. The ball scenes are inspired by the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and the costumes, Hughes’s own fabulous inventions, are indebted to the couturiers of the 1920s — a postscript acknowledges Doucet, Poiret and Patou. The “Prince” is a duke of an apparently Mediterranean principality and his palace is a villa on the Côte d’Azur. Ella is a dressmaker in her father’s shop, making beautiful, to-die-for frocks and coats for an elegant clientele from silks and wools and satins.

The pictures are glamorous, romantic and atmospheric; drawn with a breezily relaxed line, they are expressive of character and scrupulous about details of place and time. But the twists in the story are among the reasons why this book is so satisfying. Ella’s stepsisters are not ugly, except on the inside. They are models, rake-thin and perfect, sporting Ella’s creations in the shop’s showroom. Ella is a redhead with curves; the stepsisters call her “Podge” and “Carrots”. Buttons, the shop’s uniformed doorman and delivery boy, is Ella’s consolation: he makes her laugh “even when her mouth is full of pins” and dances with her in her moonlit basement. Although the duke, who is charming and rich and “very, very handsome”, falls for Ella’s rounded loveliness and her joie de vivre, a contrast to the “cool, languid beauties” of his circle, Ella makes a choice that values laughter, loyalty and creativity over wealth and grandeur. This is truly a happy ending.

ELLA'S BIG CHANCE: A Fairy Tale Retold by Shirley Hughes

(Bodley Head £10.99)

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• If you only buy one book this Christmas make sure it's...
• The Times Christmas Books 2008: Gifts
• 10 Books Not To Read Before You Die