The Princess Blog

It took a few months , but I finally got around to reading Melanie Cellier's contribution to the Entwined Tales series. It was from  Melanie Cellier 's Facebook page that I first learned about Entwined Tales , a series of six fairy tale adaptations by different authors about a family who was "blessed" with the magic of the worst fairy godfather ever, Mortimer. I had read all of Melanie's other books  as well as the first book in Entwined Tales,  A Goose Girl  by K.M. Shea , and A Little Mermaid  by Aya Ling , the fifth in the series. An Inconvenient Princess  by Melanie Cellier is the sixth and final book, so I've now read half the books while skipping over the middle three. The novels work just fine as stand-alone stories, so I didn't particularly feel like I was missing out on anything from the ones I haven't read. An Inconvenient Princess  is an adaptation of "Rapunzel," but in this version, the long-haired heroine is more of a comedic...

Today is a big day for both Rapunzel and The Princess Blog! The second season of Tangled: The Series  kicked off this morning in a big way with a new name and an exciting special called Beyond the Corona Walls .  The show itself appears to now be called Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure even though the URL still has "Tangled: The Series" in it, and it's still listed alphabetically under "T" on the Disney Now show page . I am so stoked to be able to write about this amazing premiere for my 200th post. The Princess Blog has come a long way since my 100th post . Even though I stopped updating every day, I've still had at least one new topic to write about each week. I started a YouTube channel , weekly book reviews , and a relaunch of all the books I wrote . I'm very excited to bring you all the latest princess news and reviews for another hundred posts! Beyond the Corona Walls follows the open ending of the previous special, The Secret of the Sun D...

I was recently offered an opportunity to read A Beauty Among Beasts  by Melanie Gabrell . I went in with no expectations except that it would be an adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast."   A Beauty Among Beasts  mixes several genres that would work fine on their own, but not necessarily together. It takes place in Nazi Germany and tells the story of Anna Klein, the sensible daughter of a book merchant. Anna has several siblings like Beauty from the original fairy and is the most humble of all of them, requesting a rose as a gift from her father's travels instead of jewels or gowns like her sisters. Unfortunately, that's where most of the fairy tale similarities end. As a Jewish woman, it made me a little uncomfortable to read a fairy tale set during the Holocaust. Sure, I've read The Diary of Anne Frank like most other Jewish girls my age, but that was about a real person, and I don't much enjoy my reality clashing with my fantasy. Of course, that doesn...

Amid all the recent Kingdom Hearts hype  in anticipation of the new game, I learned that there was once a Kingdom Hearts anime series in development that never made it to production. This has been the case for many princess ideas that never quite made it out the door, such as the "Princess Academy" short and the unreleased episodes of Disney Princess Enchanted Tales . The series would have been inspired by the Kingdom Hearts manga  that was released in 2009, which got me thinking about another Disney Princess manga that could have made a terrific anime. Kilala Princess  came out in 2005 and told the story of a girl whose wish to be a Disney Princess came true. She found a magical tiara that was guarded by a prince named Rei who was searching for the true princess to save his kingdom. The tiara allowed her to travel to the worlds of Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine, collecting jewels for its seven spikes so that it would regain its full power. ...

While I was debating over whether or not it would be okay to review The Incredibles 2  in a princess blog post, I remembered that Violet was in the concept drawing for Disney's  canceled "Princess Academy" short (riding a Fantasia  centaur no less), so I figured that basically makes her a Disney Princess . Plus, I don't go to the movies very often, so I'll take any excuse I can get. Disney sequels are usually released direct to DVD with minimal effort and quality, but Pixar is different. They have formed a reputation for making sequels that are just as good or superior to the originals. Toy Story 3  was one of my personal favorites, featuring Jodi Benson as Barbie. Like Toy Story ,  The Incredibles 2  managed to bring back all of their original voice talent. They might be fourteen years older, but they still sound great. Thanks to the magic of animation, they look as beautiful and youthful as ever. The Incredibles 2  picks up right where the fi...

It's been a while since I attended the Entwined Tales Launch Party on Facebook , yet the only book I had read from it until now was A Little Mermaid  by Aya Ling . Instead, I spent the past few months catching up on the authors' other works. This week, I finally read the first book from the Entwined Tales series , which, if you're not familiar with it, is a series of six fairy tale adaptations written by six different authors about characters who must deal with the trials and tribulations of an oafish fairy godfather named Mortimer. The first book in the series is A Goose Girl  by K.M. Shea , based on the Grimm Brothers fairy tale "The Goose Girl."  I've become familiar with K.M. Shea's writing style as of late, and while I enjoyed some of her books more than others , I must say that this was a very fun read. I became reacquainted with the "Goose Girl" fairy tale recently after reading a version of it in Magic at Midnight  last week, so I was ea...

There was a big announcement  made earlier today that Tokyo DisneySea , my favorite theme park in the whole world, is getting a big expansion that will include life-sized replicas of locations from  Tangled , Frozen , and Peter Pan ! This is a huge deal. If you've never been to Tokyo DisneySea, you might not realize the scope of such an announcement. Essentially, Tokyo DisneySea is paradise on Earth. Everything they build looks both natural and magical at the same time. Even the Fantasyland expansion at Walt Disney World from five years ago doesn't compare to this. It was pretty amazing that they built facades of the castles from The Little Mermaid  and Beauty and the Beast  along with some of Belle's village, but they were still just facades. Tokyo doesn't do facades. They either go big or go home. This incredible themed port is expected to be completed by 2022. It is reported  to be the largest expansion to Tokyo DisneySea ever and will include Arendelle...

In my  "Little Mermaid" origins post , I mentioned that there were three live-action movies in the works based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since then, a few announcements have been made about all three of these movies. One of them  has a theatrical release date , and it's sooner than you might think. The circus-themed indie movie that's had a trailer out for several years now is coming to select AMC theaters on August 17th. That's in two months! I wish I could be more excited about it, but the plot looks a lot closer to the 2006 tongue-in-cheek teen mermaid movie Aquamarine  than the fairy tale that it's named after. The trailer focuses on how a little girl's belief in mermaids has the potential to save the aquatic heroine who is held captive in a tank at a carnival. I've been feeling indifferent about this adaptation ever since the first trailer was released, but it's nice to know that I will have the option to see it on the big...

The internet has been buzzing about Kingdom Hearts III finally getting a release date after fifteen long years of anticipation. Unless it gets delayed again, we will be able to catch up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they travel through the realms of various Disney movies on January 29th, 2019. There have been a couple of trailers  dropped over the last few days revealing footage from Frozen , Tangled , Toy Story , Monsters Inc. ,  Hercules , and Pirates of the Caribbean . For me, the biggest announcement came from the latter half of  last night's trailer  in which Larxene of Organization XIII  remarked that Elsa might be one of the new seven pure hearts that they needed for their latest quest. Anyone who has played the first game knows that this is a reference to the Princesses of Heart , a select group of Disney Princesses who had their chance to become video game royalty  when they got captured by Maleficent in an attempt to use their pure heart...

Today's post is sponsored by my good friend Kae-Leah Williamson, Royal Purple Mermaid Princess , who contributed to the Tiara Tier on my Patreon account . If you have a suggestion for a future post, feel free to click the link to contribute. Kae-Leah chose disabled princesses for her topic, one that tends to get a lot less love than it should. In the surprise cult hit Netflix movie, A Christmas Prince , a journalist named Amber goes undercover as the tutor of Princess Emily, a little girl with a condition that makes her unable to walk on her own. "I know what you're thinking," says Emily, sizing up Amber's reaction to her condition, "Poor little rich girl. That's what they all say." In the most stereotypical response ever, Amber replies "No, I was thinking brave little girl." That was a nice try to be sentimental on Netflix's part, but having a disability does not make a person any more or less brave just for waking up in the morning a...

Fellow author Lyssa Chiavari , who helped me with my book relaunch , recently released a YA fairy tale anthology called Magic at Midnight  containing various fairy tale adaptations by her and other authors from Snowy Wings Publishing . Generally, anthologies tend to be a mixed bag. I know some other authors that I follow have contributed to fairy tale anthologies , but I mostly avoid them because I worry I might not like all of the stories if I'm not familiar with most of the contributors. Despite having a multitude of authors,  Magic at Midnight  was fairly consistent in tone, but I was surprised to learn that the tone was very different from the fantasy image portrayed on the cover of a young woman in a ballgown running into the sunset. Instead, nearly all of the stories contained elements of sci-fi or horror, which is not usually my cup of tea, although I do enjoy my fair share of sci-fi if I'm in the right mood. I am of the personal opinion that princesses d...

Some of you may recall reading about my experiences at the Broadway Princess Party last December at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. The show has picked up a lot of momentum since then. It now has a pages on Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram . They have also  extended their tour to even more venues across the country than ever. I didn't have a dire need to see the show again, but it was hard to resist when I learned that it was coming a local venue at half the price and encouraging cosplay  with the incentive of prizes. Last night, I donned my Sofia the First dress, amulet, and tiara and headed out to Hollywood Improv to meet with a friend and see how the show has changed over the past few months. The same three princesses were starring in the event as before-- Laura Osnes , who headlined the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella on Broadway , Susan Egan , who originated the role of Belle on Broadway and did the voice of Megara in Disney...