My series on the Twelve Dancing Princesses continues with this one, the one that started it all for my good friend Dr. M., when her toddler pulled it off the shelf at the library.
The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler. Once upon a time, a king fell in love. He built a palace of pink stone for his queen over the bright brook where they had their first meeting, and prepared for a happy ending and heirs to the throne. But his wife bore daughter after daughter, all unable to inherit the kingdom. The clear stream stagnated into a lake and the sparkling castle grew dank and moldy. When the queen died bearing a thirteenth daughter, the king was outraged and refused to allow her in the royal nursery. Little Zita was raised as a servant in the kitchen, only gradually getting to know her own history and, later, her sisters, all of whose names start with the letter A. She makes friends with Breckin, a stable boy, and starts having secret weekly sleepovers in her sisters’ chamber. Though she revels in her sisters’ love, Zita desperately longs for acceptance by her father as well, and this is not forthcoming. He is angry enough that his daughters do not speak to any of the princes that come as suitors, even when all eligible princes have returned home offended. Secretly, they tell Zita that they are unable to speak, and are heartbroken to think that they may never be married. The oldest, Aurelia, has a long-distance flirtation with a soldier on horseback who turns out to be Breckin’s older brother from the military, Milek, but this seems doomed. The king banished magic and magic-makers from the kingdom years earlier, so when, three-quarters of the way through the book, the princesses suddenly begin to fall asleep and sicken even as their dancing shoes are wearing out, the king will not hear that it might be a curse. Zita and Breckin, exploring in the woods together, find the hidden cottage of a friendly old witch, Babette, who was friends with the queen before magic was banished. Together, they come up with a plan to try to solve the mystery and save the princesses before it is too late.
This is a retelling focused on the people and the family relationships. While there are offended princes from other kingdoms, this little kingdom’s existence isn’t being threatened. Instead, Zita and her friends battle to save her beloved sisters, even though the only reason she isn’t under the curse is that she isn’t quite considered a real princess. 
And though Zita has been rejected by her father, she’s still allowed to live in the palace and is known to be his daughter, so that the book never ventures into the dicey-for-children area of disputed paternity. At the risk of a slight spoiler, the problem in the end turns out to be a curse placed by an evil magic user (I know you’re all shocked), but one who would never have gotten so far if the king hadn’t successfully kept nearly all the good magic users out of the kingdom. The reveal of this person happens at the end, while our relationship is with the kind and gentle Babette, who encourages Zita to push and trust herself and her friends. This makes the book an excellent counter to the “witches are always evil” theme found in so many fairy tales. While there is a little romance, the love that Zita herself experiences is mostly friendship and love of family, and there is nothing inappropriate for children. This is a solidly enjoyable retelling for middle graders on up. (Note the alternate cover that Google Images found – where is it from? Is one better? Do the different covers change the way you think about the book?)
Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .
Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by 
Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner. Read by Jeff Woodman Most of this book is told in the first person, narrated by Sophos. He was in The Thief, which I apparently don’t remember as well as I thought, because I didn’t remember him at all. Other characters that I remember from the other books do come in, though – the King and Queen of Attolia and the Queen of Eddis. Sophos is a young man exiled to an island by his uncle, the King of Sounis. He never wanted to be the heir to the kingdom, and knows that he is a disappointment both to his father and to his uncle. Then he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. It is only when he learns of treason against the king that he makes up his mind to escape and try to claim his kingdom from the Mede Empire and from the rebel barons. Turner does her usual excellent job of mixing the political with real human characters. I didn’t find that the plot had that same kind of unexpected twist that I found with the first couple, though there was certainly plenty of plotting and double-crossing. There are also the workings of the gods, which in realistic fashion are never entirely clear. The narrator, Jeff Woodman, has a perfect voice for a boy coming into manhood, which works perfectly for most of the book. He shares the downfall of many male narrators, unconvincing female voices. They either sounded very young or ancient, and he made the odd choice of giving the love interest the old lady voice. Fans of Turners other books will want to make sure to read this. Newcomers might want to start at the beginning – it’s a series well worth getting into.
Alvin Ho Collection Books 1 & 2: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things. Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters. by Lenore Look. Read by Everette Plen. These are fairly short early chapter books of the funny but realistic kids type. Alvin Ho is a second-grade Chinese-American boy, interested in many things (like superheroes and baseball) and afraid of many more, like girls and school. On weekends, Alvin is a gentleman-in-training and Firecracker Man, a fearless superhero, while during the week, he’s too scared even to talk at school. The books are two-disc affairs (two books to a set), mostly episodic adventures around things like Alvin trying to make friends at school, going camping, and what happens when he lets loose on his psychotherapist the Shakespearean cursing that his father loves to use when upset. Alvin is sometimes joined in his adventures by his older brother Calvin, and more often by his five-year-old sister Anibelly. There is a lot to like about these books. There are not so many books with Chinese-American protagonists, and Alvin definitely doesn’t fit the stereotype of the Asian teacher’s pet. Alvin believes that crying makes you feel better, and bursts into tears at times of real or potential stress. And Alvin’s family relationships are loving and believable. I might have enjoyed the books more if they had been read by someone else. Everette Plen (and Mr. & Mrs. Plen, what’s with spelling your son’s name with the feminine ending?) is a child actor who read with decent expression but uniform full-speed-ahead pacing. I wanted to love them more than I did, but they are fine examples of realistic early fiction to appeal to both boys and girls, and the boy and I enjoyed them.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses retold and illustrated by Jane Ray. Jane Ray is one of my absolutely favorite illustrators. I have yet to see a book of hers that I didn’t love the illustrations for, and this is no exception. Her two-dimensional folk art style is filled with rich colors, arching branches, and bright spots of gold. Based on the variety of hair and skin colors and body shapes, her princesses had a variety of mothers, though she doesn’t get into that. All the princesses are drawn as beautiful, including the two with glasses and the one with a double chin and non-traditional-princess figure. Where most books just don’t show the hero when he’s in the invisibility cloak, Ray’s is there, cleverly shown in shadowy folds that are a puzzle to find. The retelling is fairly straightforward, leaving characterization to the illustrations. It leaves out the bloody bits of the original, and visually explains the youngest, who guesses that they are being followed, not being the one to marry the old soldier by her looking too young to be married. The only addition to the original story is, at the very end, having the new queen hire a royal cobbler and increasing the opportunities for dance throughout the kingdom (yay, dancing!) This is a perfect version for those who like their art beautiful and their retellings traditional. 
The Twelve Dancing Princesses retold by John Cech. Illustrated by Lucy Corvino. Cech’s retelling adds some nice characterization and a more animated tone to the storytelling. Here, rather than being beheaded, earlier princes are eventually found in the mystical kingdom, from which they eventually escape to marry the other princesses. As in Jane Ray’s version, if any reason for the dancing is to be found, it is that the princesses love dancing, and so the eldest princess makes continued dancing a condition of her marrying the soldier. Lucy Corvino’s illustrations are beautiful, lively swirls of color, very different from either of the other two picture book versions here. While I like the style in general, the historical purist in me could not get over her combining fifteenth-century hairstyles with nineteenth-century dresses. I know it’s fantasy, and it shouldn’t matter… but somehow it does. It is still really beautiful. 
The Twelve Dancing Princesses Retold and illustrated by Ruth Sanderson. This version is the one that I bought for myself with my own money when I was in high school. It’s still in print, and, while not the first version in the list of picture book adaptations on Amazon, is the first one with a creator name that suggests itself in the search box – not at all bad for a retelling over 20 years old. Sanderson, like Ray, both retells and illustrates the story. The pictures are the lush, detailed oils that you expect of a quality fairy-tale retelling. It’s clearly set in the 15th century – a note even says that she research 15th century dance to try to get the dance pictures right, though not all the poses look right to me. I can tell by the hairstyles that this was done in the late 1980s, alas, though I am sure that this would not even be noticed by a child reading this, or even necessarily by a person less familiar than with the Middle Ages than my fellow medieval buffs and I. Her princesses are a little older and her hero is just a youth looking for a job rather than a retired solider. That makes the youngest and the hero the right age to be interested in each other. She names them Lina and Michael and lets them develop a romance over the course of the story. The princes who tried previously are given a potion to freeze their hearts and leave nothing but the love of dancing. She makes a few other twists to the story, like the princesses giving Michael an official invitation to the secret ball to try to trap him. A beautiful version, with the storytelling updated to slightly more modern ideas of relationships. In the end, I think, the princesses let Michael share their secret because of the relationship they’ve developed with him rather than just being busted. 
Felt Wee Folk by 
Early-Start Potty Training 
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George In this retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, young Galen grew up in the army, his father a soldier and his mother a laundress. Now, his parents dead and the war between Westfalin and Andalusia over, the only hint he has is the name of his mother’s sister in the capital city. On the way there, he meets a mysterious old woman who gives him a cloak of invisibility and, when she sees him knitting, special balls of wool, one black, one white. He thinks she’s a little touched, but he takes them to humor her. Once in town, he discovers that his mother’s sister lives in one of the nicest houses in the nicest neighborhood in town. Her husband is the official gardener of the Queen’s Gardens, and Galen, despite his lack of experience, is taken on as an under-gardener. There, he inadvertently startles Princess Rose, the eldest of the twelve flower-named princesses, who falls into the fountain she was gazing at. The resultant illness ends up infecting all of her sisters and, since they can never take a night off from their dancing, lasts for months and becomes quite serious. Nevertheless, Rose and Galen are taken with each other. In typical romance style, the story alternates viewpoints between Galen and Rose. From Rose, we learn that they have inherited this curse from an ill-considered bargain their now-deceased mother made with the King Under Stone. Not only are the princesses being worn out with dancing, but they are being groomed as brides for the twelve sons of the King Under Stone. And they are incapable of telling anyone anything about what is happening to them. Things go from bad to worse when their desperate father declares that any prince who can solve the mystery can marry a princess of his choosing. The princesses are humiliated, but even worse, the failed princes all end up dead soon afterwards, with their grieving countries suspecting witchcraft. Even though he knows he can’t expect the promised reward for himself, Galen goes against his uncle’s wishes to try to help the princesses. Though I felt that his solution was maybe a little simplistic and some of his research was left out, it worked quite well overall. The characters were nicely sketched, the country concrete, the villains suitably creepy, the pacing good, the language lovely. The romance is squeaky clean, just enough to make middle-grade girls sigh. And did I mention that Galen knits frequently? It’s a happy for me. All in all, a very satisfying fairy tale retelling. 
Ivy Loves to Give by Freya Blackwood. I brought this one home from the library just on the strength of the sweet cover illustration. It’s turned out to be a favorite at our house. Ivy, who appears to be about two, loves to give, even though her presents don’t always work. Illustrations show Ivy giving her gift – a slipper to a slug, glasses to the dog – with the actual owner of the previous page’s gift looking in puzzlement for their missing belonging. Will Ivy realize her mistakes? Will there be a present for Ivy, too? The words are economical, just four sentences for the whole story, but the pictures really carry the book. They are expressive pencil and watercolor drawings, with a perfect balance of detail and lots of white space. I’ll give a shout-out to Blackwood for a rare picture book portrayal of a nursing baby. We get a glimpse of everyone in Ivy’s family, including parents, big sister, baby brother, grandma, and multiple animals, and though there is no dialog, the affection is clear. Everything fits together just so in this book. My own toddler loves to hear it over and over again, and it’s beautiful enough for me to enjoy that, too. 
Going Bovine by 
alibrarymama 
