Princess Academy

This shouldn't be relegated to "girls only". I hope the boys read it too.

I'm not sure why this entered my radar, as I am not a middle grade girl, nor even a girl at all, nor do I care for any, but I'm glad it did. It's a surprisingly compelling novel. Here we find girls learning to be princesses not just in dainty etiquette ways, but also in those more important crafts of economics and diplomacy. But being from the middle of nowhere, they've actually had no education at all, and we start from the ground up: teaching teenagers to read.

The main character is a strong girl - mentally, not physically, leading to some insecurity she wrestles through - who really blossoms over the course of her year of education. She learns to apply what the show more girls are learning in practical ways, making their lives better and that of the entire village. She's not perfect, and grows over the course of the book, but her heart is in the right place, and she'd provide an excellent role model. show less

Princess Academy is all about Miri who lives on Mount Eskel where all the villagers have to work quarrying valuable linder from the mountain to survive. Her father won't let her work in the quarry, so Miri always struggles with feeling somehow less than the rest of her townspeople, despite being clever and brave. When royals arrive from the lowlands with news that the next princess of Danland will hail from Mount Eskel, the girls of the village are taken away to be schooled, polished, and made fit for a prince. At the academy, Miri struggles at first but then finds her chance to shine.

I'd heard plenty of great things about Shannon Hale's books, and if Princess Academy is any indication, they're all true. Princess Academy is tightly show more plotted, filled with brave, strong-willed girls for characters (most of all Miri!) who make the best of a complicated situation, and has an absolutely fantastic "knowledge is power" message that is never too heavy-handed. If you're anything like me, you might find yourself initially put off by the notion of a book about princesses in training. Don't be. This book and these would-be princesses defy expectations and stereotypes alike! show less

This was a reread, and I loved it just as much this second time around as I did when my much younger self read it the first time.

Fourteen-year-old Miri lives on a mountain where her people quarry a special stone that they supply to the rest of the kingdom. In their isolated village, they have little knowledge or care about what goes on in the lowlands. So the last thing anyone expects is for a royal messenger to arrive and announce that the next princess will be chosen from Mount Eskel.

An academy is established to train the rough mountain girls in everything they need to know to be princesses; in one year the prince will come and select his bride. But as Miri and the others know, the mountain is unpredictable. A lot can change in a show more year.

I love how this book subverted my expectations by taking a rather cliché premise and turning it into a story about the value of education and the power that comes from knowing your worth and banding together as a group. Everything about this book is perfect and you should read it!

And I’ve recently discovered it’s a series?! So those are going straight to the top of my TBR! show less

Having tried to read this book once and giving up from a combination of poor timing and just not being able to get into it, I decided on a change of format. So I listened to the audiobook from Full Cast Audio and my results did change. I was very impressed with the quality of the production -- the music, the cast and narrator, kept me coming back to the story whenever there was an opportune time for listening. I'll certainly be looking for more of their productions.

First a reminder, this is not [b:The Princess Diaries|38980|The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries, #1)|Meg Cabot|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266456915s/38980.jpg|2073907]. Heroine Miri at first has no desire at all to be a princess nor to leave the life she knows show more to attend the Princess Academy. Most of her classmates feel the same, but in the imaginary land where the story takes place, priests have divined that the next princess to marry the crown prince will be someone from Mount Eskel. Tutor Olanna is charged with taking these rough-hewn quarry workers (for all the girls except Miri work alongside their families in the stone quarry)and turning them into young ladies from whom the prince will select a bride. But they must learn far more than poise, table manners and court protocol. First they must learn to read; commerce and diplomacy figure largely in their education as well. This is a revelation to Miri and she uses her new learning to her and her village's benefit more than once. In the process she learns what she really wants to do, finds out why her father refuses to let her set foot in the quarry, and makes many other discoveries. It's a complicated tale with its share of hardship and injustice, but there is a happy ending. Recommended as a useful corrective to the blight of the Disney Princess. show less

I got this book because I enjoyed The Actor and The Housewife so much, and so I sought out another book by Shannon Hale. I was not disappointed! This book is like a lovely, iridescent polished stone of linder, the fictional opaline marble quarried by the villagers of Mount Eskel. It has hidden facets from different angles that catch your eye and your heart and leave you with a sense of strength and beauty.

Most of the children in the village start work in the quarry at age 8, but Miri, named after the tiny pink flower that bloomed out of the cracks in the linder rocks, has never been allowed to work there. She thought it was because she was small for her age, and had been deemed inadequate. Now, at age 14, she learns she, along with all show more the other village girls between the ages of 12 to 17, must go to a “princess academy” to train to be acceptable as a potential bride for the Prince.

She takes leave of her father, older sister Marda, and lifelong crush Peder to make the 3-hour journey along with 19 other girls. While there, they are exposed not only to book learning for the first time, but to competition, cliques and jealousy, and unanticipated tests of courage and friendship. Only occasionally are they allowed to return to their village on breaks.

Miri may be one of the smallest children, but it is she who figures out the secret of the linder stone, and when the academy is in real danger, it is only her secret that can help save it.

Hale is a gifted writer of different genres that at first glance seem not to bear relation to one another. But all of her books are characterized by faith, good humor, and above all, the self-sufficiency and resilience of women and girls.

Her language often plays just the right note. At one village gathering, Peder has just kissed Miri on the cheek, then runs off:

"Miri did not move for three verses of the next bonfire song. A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth like a brook trout on a fishing line, but she was too staggered to give in to it."

In another instance, one of the girls at the academy, Katar, has just confessed to Miri about the source of her unhappiness:

"…Katar sobbed misery at her side. ’I’m sorry,’ Miri said again, hating how hollow those words sounded. Katar had given her a small gift by opening her heart and showing her pain. Miri tucked the moment in her own heart and hoped somehow to repay."

This book is not really about princesses, unless you define princess as a young lady who is not afraid to summon all of her assets to take on the world and make a difference.

Highly recommended. show less

Miri is small for her age. She lives with her family in a mountain community known for its special quarried stone. Life is a struggle and things are about to get worse as girls of a certain age are forced to go to the princess academy as the king's priests have divined that the newest queen will be living among them. That's the set up of Shannon Hale's Princess Academy.

While it may sound like a traditional set up for a fairy tale where the smallest, least useful member of a town goes off to charm the crown prince and become the next queen, it isn't. It's about the hardships of mountain life, about wanting to contribute to society, the frustration of not knowing the truth behind things and finally the power of education. What Miri and show more the other girls gain above and beyond the lessons in grace and polite society, is an education and most importantly, the ability to read.

Hale uses the seasons to show the mountain in all its forms and to create a believable sense of place. She also includes folk songs and stories to build an oral history that is later enhanced and challenged by what Miri and the others learn in their studies.

Although the book is set in only a small piece of the kingdom I came away with a sense of a much larger area. Shannon Hale excels at world building while keeping the story flowing and the characters developing.

I listened to the audio version of Princess Academy on our drive to Southern California earlier this year. I plan to go back and read the printed version later. show less

This review is also available on my blog, Read Till Dawn.

I'm in a reviewing slump, because I haven't read anything I cared enough about to review lately. So what do I do when I need to have a review up in two days? I turn to my old favorites and choose one I know like the back of my hand. I haven't read Princess Academy in a long time, but it really doesn't matter because I've read it so many times that I could review it in my sleep. I won't, though - I'm wide awake right now, I promise!

Why do I love Princess Academy so much? Part of it comes from exposure, I guess. I read it for the first time when I was seven, and fell in love with just about everything about it: the mountain, the "magic," the ending. The main reason I love Princess show more Academy, though, isn't just exposure to it at an early age - it's the story, and the characters, and the setting, and just about everything else.

I love Miri for her sense of humor, her intelligence, her strength . . . and her weakness. Miri feels inferior to the other villagers because she is small and physically weak, and her father won't let her work in the stone quarry with the majority of her neighbors. Growing up on the outskirts of the quarry, spending her days with the young, the old, and the physically handicapped who can't work in the quarry, Miri has developed a sort of inferiority complex. She hides her insecurities and her loneliness by cracking jokes and teasing others, hiding herself so completely behind a facade of lightheartedness and confidence that no one suspects how unsure of herself Miri really is. I love watching Miri throughout the book as she learns not only how to read and write (though those are obviously important too!), but also how to believe in herself and to positively affect the people around her.

I also love the other characters. Peder, Britta, Esa, Frid, Knut, Lars, even Olana - they all have unique personalities, unique motives for acting the way they do, unique reactions to the formation of the Academy. Britta is my personal favorite because she begins as a minor character but becomes more and more prominent as the book goes on. Her story deserves a novel all to itself! I also love Peder for the whole childhood frienship/loyalty thing between him and Miri, and I love Katar for what makes her so desperate to win the prince's heart. Steffan is one of my favorite characters because he's more than just a cartoon-prince only good for acting as the author's trump card in the princess competition (like, "I want XYZ to marry the prince, so Steffan picks her even though that wouldn't make an sense!").

This review is becoming too long, so I'm just going to stop. I could keep going, though, listing off every single character in the book and why I love them. I could also talk about the Heidi-esque setting, and the awesome side-plot about linder (which is the stone they quarry), and the theme of familial love that runs strong through the veins of Princess Academy. Instead I'll simply summarize the rest of my review like this: It's one of my favorite books. Ever. And you need to read it.

And if you already have read it? Read it again. Then (though this is less urgent) read the sequels - here's a link to my review of the third book in the series, The Forgotten Sisters. show less