The Princess Blog

For my next book review, I was planning to cover The Silent Prince  by C.J. Brightly , a gender-bent retelling of "The Little Mermaid" that was released on Black Friday, but I unexpectedly received an ARC for The Awakened Prince  by Alora Carter , another book from the Once Upon a Prince series that I had not read yet. Based on the title, I was hoping this would be a gender-bent adaptation of "Sleeping Beauty."  Instead, it was a direct retelling of the Disney movie from the prince's perspective that adds very little to the original story. Though some of the names and lore were altered to avoid copyright issues, I could see that the author was inspired mainly by the most popular version of the story and took very little liberty with the many other fairy tale adaptations out there. The book provides everything a reader would expect from a fairy tale retelling--romance, fantasy, and a bit of medieval history with nothing new or insightful to offer. Though Prince

In recent years, it has become trendy for everyone to criticize the Walt Disney Company as much as humanly possible. In many cases, it  is justified , but  these criticisms  are unfounded regarding Wish , Disney's tribute film to their 100-year animation legacy. This is a movie that provides Disney fans with everything they have been asking, begging, and wishing of the studio for years. It is a beautifully animated original story that is all heart with no pandering and is neither a sequel nor a remake . Since the movie is also an homage to the Disney animation of the past, it is packed with subtle Easter eggs that only true Disney fans will notice and are not obnoxiously in your face like some of their previous attempts with Wreck-It Ralph 2  or Chip'n Dale: Rescue Rangers . In fact, this movie was so entertaining that it got me thinking about the characters on a deeper level than the writers may have even intended long after I left the theater. As previewed in the trailers ,

It seems like every interest has an official holiday each year, but for the longest time, there wasn't any day to celebrate our love of princesses. In 2017, the newly retired Swan Princess series  declared the film's anniversary date of November 18th to be National Princess Day . Since the date was coined by one of the few princess franchises that was not bought out by Disney , the Mouse House does very little to celebrate and instead started its own World Princess Week  at the end of each August beginning in 2021. However, the rest of us can still get together to celebrate our love of princesses for National Princess Day on November 18th. This is a significant time period for not just The Swan Princess , but many other animated princess movies which  historically always come out right before Thanksgiving to generate optimal sales. The next Disney Princess movie to follow this tradition will be Wish , which comes to theaters on Wednesday. In honor of all these princess movie

Two new Broadway musicals featured Cinderella as a leading lady this year, and neither of them lasted for even four months on the Great White Way.  The first was Bad Cinderella , adapted from Andrew Lloyd Webber's short-lived Cinderella musical on the West End. The other was the Britney Spears jukebox musical, Once Upon a One More Time , which sounded like a bad idea from its inception. Both shows suffered from poor ticket sales, backstage drama, and criticism over the long-running trend of modernizing old fairy tales . Yet, the problem is not with the character of Cinderella herself , who has been a long-standing icon of fortune, romance, and glamour, but rather with the media's obsession of correcting popular stories to fit a standardized feminist narrative. After all, the most famous Cinderella musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella , has enjoyed great success for many decades with numerous adaptations and revivals, one of which is allegedly still on the way . Be

As soon as I saw the previews for Netflix's new animated series, Unicorn Academy , I couldn't get over how similar it looked to Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders . Teenagers forming magical bonds with unicorns to save the world from evil? Yes, please! With a Jewel Riders graphic novel on the horizon, this is the perfect time to revisit that premise. Unicorn Academy is loosely based on a book series of the same name  that got picked up by Netflix and recently aired its first season. The premiere movie and successive eight episodes follow six unicorns and their riders on their quest to protect the magical realm from the evil Ravenzella, who performed reprehensible acts to previous generations, including the father of the main character, Sophia. The show contains a lot of teen angst and drama as well as rainbows, sparkles, and magic. Although Unicorn Academy features an entire school full of unicorn riders training to be protectors, it only focuses on the six students liv