{"id":11491,"date":"2013-08-07T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T11:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=11491"},"modified":"2013-08-07T07:30:14","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T11:30:14","slug":"kickin-princesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=11491","title":{"rendered":"Kickin’ Princesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Before anyone thinks I’m advocating violence, I’m using “kickin'” as an adjective here, not a verb.)
\nA friend of mine came to the store at the beginning of summer. Lena, a lifelong tomboy and athlete and now mother of two sons, found herself in charge of a Princess Ballerina summer camp for little girls. After I got done laughing (mostly), we set about finding some books about princesses that wouldn’t make her want to strangle herself with pink tulle.
\nA Babette Cole fan from childhood, Lena already knew and loved Princess Smartypants<\/em><\/a>. We pulled out Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess<\/em><\/a>. Kate Duke’s Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One<\/em><\/a> (the plucky mouse heroine isn’t a princess, but she rescues and befriends a prince whose parents initially thought her too scruffy to be a suitable playmate for their son), Cinder Edna<\/em><\/a> by Ellen Jackson and Kevin O’Malley, and The Emperor and the Kite<\/em><\/a>, by Jane Yolen and Ed Young. I wanted to give her Katrin Tchana and Trina Schart Hyman’s gorgeous The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women<\/em><\/a>, which was a staple at the store for years, but it’s gone out of stock indefinitely. (A true shame.) We were able to recommend the glorious Sense Pass King: A Story from Cameroon<\/a><\/em> by those two (still in print!). Lena picked a bunch of books and reported that the week-long camp and its read-alouds went well.
\nIt’s been several weeks since the princess ballerinas disbanded for other summer activities, but I got a text from Lena this afternoon. “How about this?” she said. “One of my little princess ballerinas came in today to say hello and had this to say: ‘The best part of summer was ballerina camp because there was dancing and books about girls without husbands.’ I think she was talking about Princess Smartypants<\/em>.” That cracked me up! I loved that a little girl — one who had signed up for princess ballerina camp, by the way, so a self-selecting fan of all things princess — liked the strong girl characters in the books she read.
\nIn writing this post, I looked for some other books that might fit the bill for my friend’s next Princess Ballerina summer camp, and came across these titles, which I haven’t yet seen but sound promising: Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots?<\/em><\/a> by Carmela LaVigna Coyle, Don’t Kiss the Frog! Princess Stories with Attitude<\/em><\/a> compiled by Fiona Waters and illustrated by Ella Burfoot (whose name belongs in a Cinderella retelling of her own), Not All Princesses Dress in Pink<\/em><\/a>, by Jane Yolen, Heidi E.Y. Stemple, and Anne-Sophie Lanquetin, and Princesses Are Not Quitters!<\/em><\/a> and Princesses Are Not Perfect<\/em><\/a> by Kate Lum and Sue Hellard.\u00a0 <\/strong> <\/strong>
\nI’m not trying to spoil the joys of princessdom here. I loved pink\u00a0as a little girl (shell pink and shocking HOT pink only, though; not toy pink or the other sickly shades) and always secretly wanted a tiara;. I adored beautiful dresses and fluffy tutus. Heck, I even tried to trade in on my first name and its link to British royalty to get out of chores. (“Queens don’t work!” I announced to my grandparents one morning when I was six, had just learned about Elizabeth I, and had been asked to make my bed before coming to breakfast. Sadly, my regal status was not acknowledged and I was forced to smooth and fold and fluff the bedding as usual.)
\nSo while I don’t want to suck the joy out of the fancy dresses and parties that little princess fans love so well, isn’t it great to expand their definition of what a princess is? After all, real princesses do real work and seek fulfilling lives beyond the wedding veil. So I’m all eyes, folks: What other great strong-girl princess stories can you recommend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not your everyday pink-wearing, frog-kissin’ batch of lily-livered princesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}