Category: Something Wonderful

 

A couple of years ago, I participated on the “Do we really need princesses anymore?” panel at CONvergence. I came in pro-princess (in fact, I don’t remember a lot of “anti-princess” sentiment), arguing that there are strong princess role models for children in many books. The fact is, for some reason, lots of girls are going to gravitate toward princesses. I’m not going to try to guess at all of the reasons this is so, though I think it is fair to argue that our culture encourages it. I simply believe that it’s okay to let our children dream of princesses. Let’s just make them heroic characters in their own right.

I brought a list of children’s books that feature strong princesses, and I received the thrill of my life when (1) I realized I was sitting next to an author I admired, and (2) she told people to come up and take my list, because it was a good one.

A few of my readers may have seen my list, but because I believe that many have not, I am sharing it here. All of these books are worth reading, and I’ve indicated my particular favorites. The list is slightly updated from the original list I shared at CONvergence.

Strong Princesses in Literature for the Young, the Young-at-Heart, and Their Families

Picture books

The Very Fairy Princess by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamliton – Although in many ways very pink, sparkly, and girly, this fairy-princess obsessed girl also contradicts others’ views of fairy princesses.

The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett – An infant princess and piglet are accidentally swapped, and the princess is raised in poverty by loving parents.

The Princess Knight by Cornelia Funke – A princess learns to be a knight and wins her own hand in marriage in a tournament.

Princess Pigsty by Cornelia Funke – Bored of being a princess, Isabella rebels. She is eventually banished to the pigsty, where she is very happy.

Princess Grace by Mary Hoffman – A princess-obsessed girl redefines princesses – for herself and her community.

Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson – Contrasts Cinderella, pitiful, helpless, and shallow, with Cinder Edna, practical, fun, and capable. Their princes are very different, too! (One of my favorites)

Princesses Are Not Quitters! By Kate Lum – Three princesses decide to be servants for a day. After their hard day, they make life easier on their servants… and they continue to do many of the chores.

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch – A dragon burns down Elizabeth’s castle (also destroying her clothes) and carries off her betrothed, Prince Ronald. Wearing a paper bag, she rescues Ronald, only to discover he’s not worth the trouble. (Another favorite)

Sleeping Bobby by Mary Pope Osborne and Will Osborne – A gender-neutral, otherwise very faithful retelling of Sleeping Beauty. Prince Bob is Sleeping Beauty, gifted with kindness, courage and modesty, “qualities that anyone might wish for and admire.” He is rescued by an unnamed princess who shares his virtues. (Also one of my favorites)

Part-time Princess by Deborah Underwood – An ordinary girl turns into a princess at night. In frilly dresses, she regularly saves her kingdom from disaster. (Yet another favorite)

Easy readers

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale – A perfect princess and her supposed unicorn are secretly a monster-fighting duo. Since I first put it on this list, Hale and Hale have added more books to the series: The Princess in Black and the Perfect Princess Party and The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde.

Comic Books and Graphic Novels

Princeless by Jeremy Whitley – This series has a diverse cast of characters and some very funny moments (my favorite bit occurs early in the series, when a female is trying to choose armor). It now includes a spin-off series, Raven: The Pirate Princess. I have one caveat: Someone once said to me, “I wish all of the men [in the series] weren’t evil.” At the time, I didn’t agree that the books were anti-male, but having read a couple of Raven volumes, I understand what that person meant. Some people reject feminism because they think that feminists believe all men are awful. I strongly disagree with that view of feminism, but Whitley manages to reinforce the stereotype in a scene in which Raven selects her crew.

Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale – Rapunzel in a Weird West universe

Wonder Woman – Need I say more? I especially enjoy the first six volumes of the New 52 Wonder Woman series (Blood, Guts, Iron, War, Flesh, and Bones).

Books for Older Children and Teens

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson – The princess is strong, but the author’s attempt to write a body-positive story hasn’t gone over well with some people. There are more books in the series, but I haven’t read them.

The Goose Girl and The Princess Academy series by Shannon Hale – All of these books feature strong female characters, including princesses. There is a heavy emphasis on romance.

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia Wrede – Funny book featuring a princess who is definitely a role model. There are more books in the series, but I haven’t read them all. (A favorite)

I love cultural “breadcrumbs” in books, movies, and music — those times when one thing gives a nod to something that came before it.  I’m not referring to epigraphs or cover songs or novels that retell a story through the eyes of another character, although all of these can be very enjoyable. I’m thinking of instances when, if you know the work to which another work is referring, you experience a little thrill of recognition… and if you don’t know the original, inspirational work but realize that a reference is being made to it, you might be inclined to seek it out.

One fun trail of these “breadcrumbs” occurs in three books by three different authors published over the course of 49 years: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, and Breadcrumbs (yes, Breadcrumbs) by Anne Ursu. All three books involve a female protagonist who does not fit in. In all three, the protagonist is being raised by a mother who, if not actually a single parent, is parenting alone at the time of the action. And the first two books were Newbery Award winners.

I’m confident that most of my readers are familiar with A Wrinkle in Time, which was published in 1962. Even if you’ve never read it, you can certainly understand When You Reach Me and Breadcrumbs — both books stand on their own — but you’ll get more out of the books, particularly Stead’s, if you read A Wrinkle in Time first.

Published in 2009, When You Reach Me is set in New York City in the late 1970s. The main character, Miranda, is a sixth grader with one lifelong friend — a boy named Sal, who lives in her apartment building. The book weaves together the story of how Miranda copes when Sal stops talking to her with a mystery involving a series of anonymous notes that have been left for her.  A Wrinkle in Time figures heavily in the story — it is Miranda’s favorite book, and a boy named Marcus uses it to introduce the subject of time travel.

“Some people think it’s possible, you know,” Marcus mumbled.

“What?”

He pointed at my book. “Time travel. Some people think it’s possible. Except those ladies lied, at the beginning of the book.”

“What?”

“Those ladies in the book—Mrs. What, Mrs. Where, and Mrs. Who.”

“Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which,” I corrected him.

He shrugged.

Like When You Reach Me, the 2011 book Breadcrumbs is a tale of a fractured “best and only friends” relationship between the main character, Hazel Anderson, and the boy next door, Jack. Hazel’s name is surely no accident; the book is based somewhat loosely around Hans Christian Andersen’s story, The Snow Queen. Lots of other references show up in the book, including nods to some Andersen’s other fairy tales and to The Hobbit, the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and, of course, A Wrinkle in Time. Ursu also alludes to When You Reach Me, though only once and not by name.

She opened up the new library book she’d brought for the bus ride and willed her thoughts to disappear in the page. The girl in it was reading A Wrinkle in Time. She was best friends with a boy who lived in the apartment below. And then one day the boy stopped talking to her.

As in Andersen’s fairy tale, Jack is taken by the Snow Queen, and Hazel sets out to save him. But when she enters the woods in pursuit of her friend, things turn dark. This is no delicate fairy tale, where the brave and beautiful heroine seems almost to float through the hardships she encounters, making friends all along the way. In fact, Hazel finds that, once she adventures into the woods, things don’t work at all the way she expected them to. The darkness of the tale reminds me a bit of Neil Gaiman (his Coraline is yet another book that Ursu references in her story), and when one character tells Hazel, “The woods does funny things to people,” I couldn’t help but think of Jennifer Roberson’s Karavans series.

With all of the references in Breadcrumbs, you could set up a year-long book club. But this week I’m going to suggest that you focus on the trail that leads from A Wrinkle in Time to When You Reach Me and, finally, to Breadcrumbs. You won’t regret it.

 

Being a list-maker and someone who prefers not to fly by the seat of her pants, I have a list of topics I might cover on my blog. As far as my “something wonderful” posts go, I want to cover books, music, movies, and other things that most of my readers may not have encountered. That means I plan to skip reviewing the stuff that everyone talks about, like the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” which is, indeed, wonderful… but you’ve already heard that from other sources, haven’t you?

Most of the things on my list are individual items (like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) or categories (like slow-burn sci-fi/fantasy romances). So far there has been only one concept on my list: rereading books. I wasn’t really sure, though, if I should bother to post about that. After all, rereading books isn’t that unusual, is it?

And then a friend of mine said to me, “I never reread books.” I decided I would go ahead with the post.

I have a book list that I will never finish. Right now it is more than 23 pages long, and I put books on the list at a faster rate than I remove them. It doesn’t help that I love to reread books, over and over again.

I do read most books only once, but there are many for which once is not enough. After all, if a book counts as “something wonderful,” why on earth wouldn’t I come back to it, particularly since I have a fairly poor memory for things that I don’t need to remember? Give me enough time, and I can safely reread a mystery, because I’ll have forgotten “who dunnit” and why.

Some books I’ve only reread once to date, like Dune, though I keep thinking it might be time to read it again. But many books I’ve read more than that. I’ve read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings four times each now, and I have no doubt that, given a long enough life, I’m not done rereading them.

Sometimes rereading a book is like visiting an old friend. Give me enough reads through a book like Emma and I will, despite my confessed poor memory for trivial details, remember a fair amount of what the book contains. I remember quite well how fussy Emma’s father is about the health of others and how he urges them to forego rich foods in favor of things like gruel, but I still love to curl up and read those passages again.

Sometimes I develop a new understanding of a character as I reread a book. The first time I read Jane Eyre, I simply saw Edward Rochester as a romantic hero. The second time I read it, I thought he was manipulative and even a little cruel. The third time I read it, I saw him as pitiful, doing the things he did because he was profoundly insecure. Each of these rereadings has given him a complexity of character that I wouldn’t have seen if I had stopped with my first reading.

Sometimes my rereadings deepen my appreciation for a book, particularly for really good children’s literature. I heartily agree with people like C.S. Lewis, who wrote: “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” I think that we often rely on the children in our lives (our own children, nieces and nephews, or children we teach) as an excuse to read children’s books. But a really good children’s book needs no excuse and, indeed, if you haven’t reread a book like Winnie-the-Pooh since you were a child (or have never read it at all), you’re missing out.

For instance, when you were four and someone read Winnie-the-Pooh to you, you were probably amused, but some of the humor went right over your head, such as the statement that Piglet’s “grandfather had had two names in case he lost one—Trespassers after an uncle, and William after Trespassers.” I firmly believe that, while Winnie-the-Pooh is a wonderful book to read to little kids, you can’t fully appreciate it until you are an adult.

Likewise, children are entertained by the adventures of Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad, and Badger in The Wind in the Willows, but they tend to miss some of the lyricism in Kenneth Grahame’s writing. The chapter “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” is so beautiful that musicians like Syd Barrett and Van Morrison have made references to it in album and song titles. Again, it wasn’t until I reached adulthood that I was profoundly moved by the religious awe expressed in that chapter.

Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corner; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

“Rat!” he found breath to whisper, shaking. “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!”

When passages like that exist, how can you not reread a book?

This week, think of a book you read once and loved. Pick it up again. Maybe you’ll gain new insights on characters or a new appreciation for the book, or maybe you’ll just re-experience the pleasure that led you to love that book in the first place. Whatever you find between the covers, I hope you will join me in believing that rereading good books is one of life’s great pleasures.