What A Wild Story, Minimoni! - Rocío Bonilla - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Rocío Bonilla

SERIES: Babymoni

GENRE: Children's Picture Book

PUBLICATION DATE: April 21, 2026

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A lovely picture book containing a story-within-a-story and raising some pertinent questions. Adorable characters and illustrations in two styles. Might be a bit tricky plot for younger kids to comprehend independently, but it can be an excellent resource for discussions. Definitely recommended.

Plot Preview:

Minimoni’s class is putting up a year-end school play on the story of “St. George and the Dragon”. However, as Minimoni and her friends read the story, they realise that it contains several problematic elements. Is there any point in enacting these old stories that don’t fit into modern values?

This story was originally published in Catalan/Spanish under the title “Quina animalada d’història, Minimoni?” in 2025. This English translation was published in 2026.

This is the second book I’ve read featuring Minimoni, and it ended up much better than the earlier book, “What is Love About, Minimoni?”

The plot this time comes to us as a story-within-a-story, with Minimoni and her classmates forming one narrative and their reading of the classic fairytale making the subset story. I absolutely loved this idea! It is a good way of updating children on the classic fairytale just in case they aren’t aware of it. That said, the two sections aren’t distinct but intertwined, with the change in the art style and the typeface serving as the main indicators of which plot is active. This might be confusing to some kids. I do understand why the sub-story wasn’t recounted at a go, but perhaps the visual indicators of the transition could have been more prominent.

The original fairytale is quite dark and contains a lot of cruelty. But this comes out only through the text and not the illustrations – thank heavens. Its discussion leads to several examples of how fairytales haven’t aged well, but a kind librarian/teacher helps the kids understand why we still need to read such tales despite their outdated nature. I hope her pointers help children enjoy fairytales without feeling judged and with the realisation that the stories come from a different era and thinking.

The characters in Minimoni’s POV are quite entertaining. We learn the kids’ names only through the initial cast list, but each of them seems clever and kind.

The children also have an adorable dragon named Oliver as their schoolmate, and he is quite upset by the portrayal of the fierce dragon in the fairytale. It’s a great opportunity to discuss how certain people might feel guilty or targeted because of the misdeeds of others of their ilk. It’s also amazing to note how the human classmates never let Oliver feel the burden of being the same species as the evil dragon. No criticism by association in this – a worthy lesson for all of us to remember!

I love the ultimate enactment of the school play, especially one important casting choice; I absolutely didn’t see that coming! 😅

The writing is fairly simple. Though there are scattered big words, they can easily be explained through context.

The illustrations are fabulous. I love how the two stories contain a distinct look to help us figure out the active narrative. The graphics in the classic story are a bit darker, so they suit its tone better. The typeface is also different from the fairytale.

I had a lot of fun reading this, but more importantly, I loved how it highlighted the inappropriate tropes in fairytales without dissing the entire genre and without discouraging kids from reading them. We need more such thinking in this era of cancel culture.

Definitely recommended. This would be a great book for parent-child and teacher-students discussions. The official target age is 3-6 years, and Amazon states the target age as 2-4 years, both of which are a bit off. I think this book would work better for slightly older children, say in the 4-8 year range, because of its tremendous potential for discussions on several serious issues.

My thanks to Albatros Media for providing the DRC of “What A Wild Story, Minimoni!” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.