The Princess Blog

Just when I thought I'd seen every creative way to retell a fairy tale , a new series called  The Princess Swap series  showed up at my library. At first glance,  Cinderella and the Beast (or, Beauty and the Glass Slipper)  by Kim Bussing appears to be a simple case of mistaken identity as two princesses wind up in the wrong story. However, it is actually much more than that. In fact, these two misplaced heroines wind up exactly where they need to be to learn important lessons and grow into the iconic princesses they were meant to be. The book ages down its protagonists to 12 to match its ideal reader's age and forgoes the romance from these classic stories in favor of more relevant themes including friendship , forgiveness , and perseverance . It even has a touch of disability inclusion  with Ella's glass leg. One minute, Ella is at home, minding her own business, and the next, she finds herself in an unfamiliar land surrounded by strangers. She learns that...

I have now read a quarter of the books in the Hope Ever After series , a multi-author collaboration of fairy tale retellings to help fight human trafficking. My most recent read is A Faithful Hope  by DaLeena Taylor , which might be my favorite in the series thus far. This book retells an obscure French fairy tale called "The Blue Bird,"  which was translated in  The Green Fairy Book . This story has it all--an outcast princess, a broken kingdom to restore, a magical transformation , and a love story to stand the test of time. I was hooked from the first page and riveted by all the twists and turns this detailed story took. It is a faithful gender-swapped depiction of the fairy tale. In this version, the princess turns into a bluebird instead of the prince. Princess Aderyn's kingdom is in crisis. Her family and their subjects need the healing properties of silver to survive, but the kingdom has run dangerously low on its supply. To save everyone, Aderyn enters an arrange...

The Scarlet Rose  is the second book I've read from Valia Lind's Skazka Fairy Tales , a series of Russian-inspired fairy tale retellings. This story is a fairly standard adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast."  She made some small changes to the story to make it her own, but for the most part, it follows the Disney movie beat for beat. This comfortable and familiar retelling falls perfectly into the "cozy fantasy romance" genre that the Skazka Fairy Tales are categorized as. I enjoyed the love story from her other book, The Cursed Beauty , more than this one since it took the main character a longer to fall in love with the beast. However, The Scarlet Rose  contains some interesting family dynamics by incorporating the siblings from the original fairy tale instead of making the "Beauty" character an only child and giving the "Beast" character his own family that he swore to protect. A young lady named Nikita grows concerned when her father ...

It's no secret that modern anime tends to be derivative. Almost every new animated show from the East tells the story of a character reincarnated  into another world or a younger version of themselves. However, another trope, specifically among anime about royalty, has dominated the airwaves. Nearly every would-be anime princess in recent years begins her story with a broken engagement to a prince. This was the catalyst of everything from 2023's I'm Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness  to last year's 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy and The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor . This season, a brand new show entitled I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons  follows in their footsteps. The series begins with a noble lady named Leticia forced into an arranged marriage with Prince Clarke. To prepare her for her future as a princess, her parents send her to the castle for private finish...

The final day of the fairy tale advent calendar  contained a generous offer of four books from Emily Deady's Fairy Tale Royals series. This author was new to me, so I decided to check one of them out. Although I was going to start at the beginning with her "Cinderella" retelling, I settled for Pearl of Magic  because it's hard to find good retellings of "The Little Mermaid."  This was another adaptation that did not contain mermaids , but it still had some magical properties. The main character is a type of sorceress whose race is oppressed by other kingdoms. She is silenced by a magic necklace and must get to know her captor through hand gestures alone. The story is similar to  The Prince's Captive  by Celeste Baxendell . Aizel is a Majis who uses her voice to command power. When her people are persecuted and her sister's life is on the line, she must agree to kill an enemy prince that she rescued from drowning. Meanwhile, Prince Erich, whose king...