The Princess Blog

Long before the bumbling fairy godfather Mortimer bestowed troublesome magical gifts on his changes in the Entwined Tales series ,  Gail Carson Levine  graced us with the incompetent fairy godmother Lucinda in her captivating "Cinderella" adaptation, Ella Enchanted . Today, she is writing as much as ever . Last week, she released a prequel to Ella Enchanted called Ogre Enchanted , which explores some of Lucinda's previous magical follies. The story is a very loose reverse adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast"  about a healer named Mistress Evora who doesn't believe in getting married too young. When the troublesome fairy Lucinda overhears her turn down her friend Wormy's marriage proposal, she is cursed to live as an ogre with a time limit of roughly two months to agree to a marriage proposal if she does not wish to remain in this state forever. Evie took some time to grow on me as a protagonist. Unlike Aza from my favorite Gail Carson Levine book,...

I completed  The Princess Game: A Reimagining of Sleeping Beauty  in record time, solidifying my current obsession with Melanie Cellier's fairy tale princess books. This is the last book in her  Four Kingdoms series , but not the last to take place in Melanie's extended princess universe. The Beyond the Four Kingdoms series is still in progress, which means there will be plenty of new literature to look forward to in this realm of fairy godmothers and suspense. However, this book still marks the end of one era and the beginning of another. So, how does The Princess Game  hold up in comparison to The Princess Companion , The Princess Fugitive , and The Princess Pact ? There were a few notable differences that stood out to me right away. It's the first book in the series to be written in first person format, which probably should have been done earlier because the other books were clearly meant to be from the perspective of the princesses, even going so far ...

One of the most common criticisms that princesses get from adults is that they encourage little girls to be vain. It's a separate issue from  body image  because it's about their delicate features and not their shape. In fairy tales, there is always an emphasis on the princess character's striking beauty. She is fair-skinned and raven-haired with big eyes and glittering jewels. Take for instance the '90s board game  "Pretty Pretty Princess,"  in which the goal is to have all of the jewelry in the game and win the jewel-studded crown in order to become the princess. As we all know, being a princess is not just about jewelry. Newer Disney Princess movies tend to place more emphasis on inner beauty than many of the older ones. Fairest  is a book by Gail Carson Levine  about a girl named Aza who wishes more than anything to be beautiful. It is a twist on the classic "Snow White" tale, changing her defining trait from physical beauty to a be...

It's no secret that I am a big fan of Gail Carson Levine 's work. I read all of her books when I was in high school and college. Just a few months ago, she published a prequel to The Two Princesses of Bamarre . I haven't read that book in many years, so my memory of it is vague, but there were some magical items in  The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre  that I recalled from The Two Princesses of Bamarre such as the boots that travel seven leagues in a single step and the table cloth that can create infinite food. Other than the enchanted relics, The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre  is a terrific stand-alone story that has little to do with The Two Princesses of Bamarre . It shares some similarities to the "Rapunzel" fairy tale in the same way that Fairest  does with  "Snow White" and Ella Enchanted  with  "Cinderella." Mostly, though, it is a metaphor for the treatment of the Jewish people during World War II. In The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre , Peregrine i...

The concept of a "faery princess" is often pegged as the most feminine thing a girl can dress up as. Yet, there are surprisingly few stories about faery princesses. The ones that do exist are somewhat obscure. Sure, there's Queen Titania from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but that story contains no faery princesses, and her character is not referenced often in fiction. The term "faery" is derived from the "fae folk,"  who were mischievous sprites from old European mythology that liked to prank mortals with their powers. They did not necessarily have wings, but this changed during the era of of  J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan  around the early 1900s, which portrayed Tinker Bell as a tiny winged woman. Though "fairy" is the more common spelling (even though fairy tales rarely actually have faeries in them), "faery" is more proper because it's closer to the root word, "fae." Surprisingly, Di...

It's time to talk about  everyone's favorite makeover story . Cinderella has been done and redone so many times that she's turned into more of a trope than an actual character. Every time I have dressed up as a princess for Halloween that I thought was at least fairly recognizable someone has asked me if I was supposed to be Cinderella. It never fails. I've been asked it as Belle, Ariel, Princess Peach, and more. She is by far the most common character to pop into anyone's head when they think of the word "princess." With  Disney's 2015 remake  and the  the recent Broadway revival , that is unlikely to stop any time soon. What is it, exactly, that makes Cinderella such a timeless character? The story goes so far back through so many cultures that no one actually knows where or when it began. The most famous version is  the one by Charles Perrault , which incorporates the fairy godmother, pumpkin, mice, and glass slippers that have become so...

I was going to make a post about  Elena of Avalor  today until I saw on her  Facebook page  that  it is Book Lover's Day . I decided this would be a great opportunity to tell you about some of my favorite princess books, including  some by yours truly . By far, my biggest inspiration when it comes to writing is  Gail Carson Levine . Every princess fan should know who she is, since she penned Ella Enchanted ,  one of the most famous princess books of our time . Though it was that book that earned her a Newberry Award, I can't say it's my favorite of her works. That honor would have to go to  Fairest , which was a spin-off of Ella , but very much its own story. If you are unfamiliar with her work (which would surprise me if you are reading this blog), Gail specializes in re-imagining classic fairy tales in new and unexpected ways. What if Cinderella had to do everything her stepmother told her to not because she was weak-willed, but b...