Saturday, August 8, 2015

Best Princess Tales Book List

Do you enjoy Princess tales? Check out this book list...


1) "The Goose Girl" by Shannon Hale

 A beautifully textured and deeply re-imagined version of the Grimm Brothers Goose Girl, Hale’s first novel is too long by a fair amount, but ensorcelled teen readers, swept up in the romance and the luscious language, probably won’t notice. All the elements are here: a princess called Ani is born with the gift of hearing and understanding the birds, the wind, and her beautiful horse, Falada. But Ani’s mother, the queen, who has the gift of people-speaking, is so disappointed that Ani’s gifts are in another direction that she sends Ani off to marry a prince of the next kingdom. On the road, Ani’s serving maid Selia and her cohorts kill her guard and Selia takes Ani’s place. Ani is cared for by a forest woman, becomes a goose herd in the town, and sees Falada’s head hung in the town square. When Ani rallies her gaggle of friends to try to stop the war that Selia is instigating to hide her treachery, it leads to a gorgeous, dramatic climax where stories “tell us what they can. The rest is for us to learn.” (Fiction. YA)



2) "The Selection" by Kiera Cass

It's a bad sign when you can figure out the elevator pitch for a novel from the get-go.

In this case, if it wasn't "The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games," it was pretty darn close. In a rigid, caste-based dystopian future, Illéa’s Prince Maxon has come of age and needs to marry. One girl will be chosen by lottery from each province to travel to the Capital and live in the palace so the prince can make his choice. The winning girl will become queen, and her family will all be elevated to Ones. America, a Five, doesn't want to join the Selection because she is in love with Aspen, a Six. But pressure from both her family and Aspen causes her to relent, and the rest is entirely predictable. She's chosen, she goes to the palace, she draws the ire of the other girls with her beauty and the interest of the prince with her spunky independence. Prince Maxon is much nicer than she expected, but she will remain loyal to Aspen. Maybe. Shabby worldbuilding complements the formulaic plot. Scant explanation is made for the ructions that have created the current political reality, and the palace is laughably vulnerable to rebels from both the North and the South, neither of whom are given any credible motives. But there's lots of descriptions of dresses.

A probably harmless, entirely forgettable series opener. (Dystopian romance. 13 & up)



3) "Book of a Thousand Days" by Shannon Hale

A rousing, even spellbinding tale—with outlines in the Grimms’ Maid Maleen—is set in medieval Mongolia and told in journal form. Dashti is maid and scribe to Lady Saren, whose father has bricked both of them in a tower for Saren’s crime of refusing to be married to vicious lord Khasar. Dashti knows healing songs from the steppes, and she needs them, as Saren is what we would now call schizophrenic. The girls’ captivity is eased at first by visits of the Khan Tegus, but the Khasar visits, too, and threatens to burn the tower with them inside. The rats that have eaten their food supply also tunnel a way out, so they escape—and find Saren’s father’s city destroyed. They make their way to Khan Tegus, where both girls serve hidden in his kitchen. Dashti’s healing songs are needed in a war between Khasar and Tegus, and who she is, and who they are, come forth in a strongly presented climax. Dashti’s voice is bright and true; Hale captures her sturdy personality, Saren’s mental fragility and Khan Tegus’s romantic warrior as vibrantly as she limns the stark terror of the Mongolian cold and the ugly spirit from which Khasar draws his strength. (Fantasy. 12-15)




4) "Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow" by Jessica Day George

With spirit, energy and a puckish sense of humor, George weaves the “East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon” tale into a novel-length saga. The ninth child of an impoverished family, the Pika (girl) or Lass—for her mother will not even name her—grows into her gift of understanding the speech of animals under the tutelage and affection of her oldest brother Hans Peter. He has come from seafaring and is sad and wounded in his soul. When a white bear offers material comfort to the family in exchange for a year of the Lass’s company, she accepts, although Hans Peter warns her off. She goes with her companion wolf Rollo to live with the bear in a palace of ice, served by gargoyles, fauns and selkies. A man sleeps in the Lass’s bed each night but does not speak or touch her. Like Psyche, the Lass cannot resist trying to see him by candlelight and lo, he is the bear. The troll princess who has enchanted him takes him “east of the son and west of the moon.” The Lass rescues her own bear prince, and her brother and his love and reveals her own name in a rousing and happy ending. Rich in Norwegian lore and perfectly delicious to read. (Fiction/fairytale. 10-14)




5) "The Princess and the Hound" by Mette Ivie Harrison

Like a tale spun out over many winter evenings, this moves at a stately pace, and even its climax is measured. It begins with the story of King Richon and the Wild Man, and how the king became a bear. His descendant, the young Prince George, shares with his mother the ability to understand animal speech and lives, which is forbidden in the kingdom. When the queen dies, George is left with his secret and the burden of feeling he cannot be as good a king as his father. When George is betrothed to a neighboring princess who is always accompanied by her dog, it takes him a long time to tease out the relationship between the princess and her hound, despite his gift. The author ably delineates the power of the forest and its creatures and explores the difficulty of how to know another, even one’s father or one’s betrothed. Not for readers who want fast pacing or strong action, but still a well-told tale. (Fantasy. 12-14)



6) "Magyk" by Angie Sage

Heads up, Harry, there’s a new young wizard on his way up. Ten years after a complicated bit of baby-switching, young Jenna learns that she’s not a member of the tumultuous Heap household (six boys, just imagine), but a hidden Princess. The revelation comes as she’s being swept to safety, her life forfeit to a crew of thoroughly knavish baddies headed by Necromancer DomDaniel. Along the way, she and her protector, ExtraOrdinary Wizard Marcia Overstrand pick up not only an assortment of fugitive Heaps, but an orphaned pipsqueak dubbed “Boy 412”—who gradually exhibits stunning powers of Magyk<\b>, as the local brand of spellcasting is dubbed. Tongue firmly in cheek, Sage creates a vividly realized world in which pens and rocks can display minds of their own, and a forest “still had a bad wolverine problem at night, and was infested with carnivorous trees.” Ultimately, Jenna and Co. overcome all such obstacles, as well as their sly, dangerous, but bumbling adversaries, and Boy 412’s (thoroughly telegraphed) true identity comes out. A quick-reading, stand-alone, deliciously spellbinding series opener. (Web site)(Fantasy. 10-13)




7) "Cinder" by Marissa Meyer

Although it packs in more genres than comfortably fit, this series opener and debut offers a high coolness factor by rewriting Cinderella as a kickass mechanic in a plague-ridden future.

Long after World War IV, with a plague called letumosis ravaging all six Earthen countries, teenage Cinder spends her days in New Beijing doing mechanical repairs to earn money for her selfish adoptive mother. Her two sisters will attend Prince Kai’s ball wearing elegant gowns; Cinder, hated because she’s a cyborg, won’t be going. But then the heart-thumpingly cute prince approaches Cinder’s business booth as a customer, starting a chain of events that links her inextricably with the prince and with a palace doctor who’s researching letumosis vaccines. This doctor drafts cyborgs as expendable test subjects; none survive. Cinder’s personal tenacity and skill, as well as Meyer’s deft application of "Cinderella" nuggets—Cinder’s ill-fitting prosthetic foot (loseable on palace steps); a rusting, obsolete car colored pumpkin-orange—are riveting. Diluting them is a space-fantasy theme about mind-controlling Lunars from the moon, which unfortunately becomes the central plot. A connection between Cinder’s forgotten childhood and wicked Lunar Queen Levana is predictable from early on.

Despite the simplistic and incongruous-feeling telepathic-enslaver theme, readers will return for the next installment in this sharp, futuristic "Cinderella" tale. (Science fiction/fairy tale. 12-15)




8) "A Kiss in Time" by Alex Flinn

Sleeping Beauty wakes up in the 21st century; clichés ensue. When Princess Talia pricks her finger on a spindle on her 16th birthday, she fulfills a curse that puts the entire kingdom of Euphrasia to sleep for centuries. Modern teen Jack, on the lam from a guided bus tour of Europe, discovers the slumbering kingdom and wakes the princess in a decidedly creepy date-rape–like scenario. Both wishing to flee the clutches of the king, they escape together to Jack’s home in Miami, where the girls are either vapid sluts or nerdy brains and the boys are mostly just clueless. The narration shifts between Talia and Jack, but the device sheds little light into their characters; both are too broadly drawn to engage readers. She seems petulant and pampered but turns out to be kind and adaptable; he’s supposedly a slacker, but he’s really brimming with motivation. All too easily they buff away each other’s sharp edges, though their lack of chemistry makes their inevitable declarations of love forced and awkward. There is nothing fresh about this reinterpretation.(Fantasy. 11-14)



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)