In Steig's inimitable style--imaginative whimsy with a strong dose of mellow common sense--here's an antihero for the young: green-headed Shrek, described as rather uglier than he's pictured, begins his quest for a still-uglier princess by "slogging along the road, giving off his awful fumes" after his parents have "hissed things over" and "kicked him goodbye." Not since Briggs's Fungus the Bogeyman (1979) has there been such an original--and comical--reexamination of the reverse world of monsterdom.
