Tuesday Treasure
"Once upon a time ..."
A conventional fairy tale opening for a non conventional tale.
The king and queen no longer live in a castle. Fighting wars and losing badly means they are reduced to living in a caravan in the deep dark wood. When their baby daughter is born they decide she can rescue them. Of course they did expect the baby would be a boy!
Her mother explains: "She will grow up to be a beautiful princess. I will annoy a bad fairy and get the Princess into bother, and then a handsome prince will rescue her, and we'll all go off and live in his castle."
Naturally Princess Rosamund has a different plan and it involves a lot of biffing. She borrows a bike complete with decorative dice, stirrup pedals and a lantern and heads off to find a prince. "Rosamund had lots of adventures .... She did all the things a heroine ought to do, but she didn't catch her prince." Look closely to see these things on the cover illustration by Patrick Benson. You may know his work already from the famous book Owl Babies also by Martin Waddell.
Rosamund returns home. She looks around the forest and in a perfect twist she sees this sign
THIS WAY TO THE ENCHANTED PRINCE
and they "lived happily ever after, too."
I have loved this book for a long time and so I decided to purchase a used copy for myself because, yes you have already guessed, this book is sadly out of print. Tonight I made a startling discovery - my copy has been signed by Martin Waddell himself!
Another modern fairy tale about an assertive female, achiever, in this case leavened with the sort of ebullient good humor that sensibly whisks problems away as fast as they arise. Kirkus
In the late 1990s I completed some post graduate study in Children's Literature. For the final subject we were expected to complete a mini thesis (10,000-15,000 words) and this book - The Tough Princess was my inspiration. My topic - The Modern Princess Tale. I have surprised myself that I had not previously explored this book on my blog.
Some of the books referred to in my mini thesis:
- Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole
- The Worm and the Toffee Nosed Princess by Eva Ibbotson
- The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
- Sleeping Ugly by Jane Yolen
- The Karate Princess by Jeremy Strong
- The Princess who hated it by Robin Klein
- Snow White in New York by Fiona French
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