Is there something in the air? I have just read not one but two stories based on the same fairy tale, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses".
The first was next years YRCA choice for Grades 7-9, "Princess of the Midnight Ball" by Jessica George where you are introduced to the story of 12 beautiful princesses who are dancing their nights away in an underworld location. It is up to a handsome and kind soldier, Galen, who has been given an invisible cloak as a reward for his thoughtfulness to an old woman and who has fallen in love with the eldest daughter Rose, to save them. Because of his infatuation he is determined to follow and free the princesses from the curse bestowed upon them as result of the wish of their mother to bear her husband a child.
But because the beauty of a fairy tale is that everyone can make it their own, Diane Zahler has also created a story around this same fairy tale called "The Thirteenth Princess".
In this retelling the twelve princesses are also forced to dance their nights away because of magical interference. But in this version they have another 13th sister, Zita, forced to live as a servant as their father believes her to be the cause of his beloved wife's death. But it is Zita who does not fall under the curse and who, with the help of the stable boy, his handsome elder brother and a mysterious old woman living in the woods, is determined to save the sisters she has grown to know and love.
I think the girls will love both.
1 comment:
Oh, I read the The Thirteenth Princess a month or so back! I saw it on on the YRCA and it was in the public library so i checked it out and read it! I thought it was really imaginative- most books that retell fairy tales are. I really like it!
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