Princess on the Edge: Dangerously Ever After by Daska Slater

PRINCESS AMANITA LOVED THINGS THAT WERE DANGEROUS.

Amanita is not your mother’s fair princess. She adores her pet scorpion and has a ponytail to match his be-stingered tail. Her bike has no brakes, just to make the ride a little more–-stimulating, and her favorite fun is walking blindfolded around the wall on the edge of the moat.

But her special princessly pleasure is her garden. It has just the right stuff for a princess who loves peril:

PRICKLES AND STICKLES AND BRAMBLES AND NETTLES!”

But when mild-mannered Prince Florian comes calling for a courtly walk in the garden, he politely plucks a bunch of Amanita’s gorgeous “grenapes”–-grapes which explode like grenades when picked. To make amends for this faux pas, he sends her a dozen long-stemmed pink roses and an apologetic note.

Amanita spurns the sweet smelling roses. (Her garden posies stink like limburger cheese, and her heckleberries heckle passers by with insults.) But then she notices the impressive thorns on the stems. Ouch! But for Amanita thorns are a feature, not a bug, and she quickly ensconces them in a vase, upside down to display this fine quality! This prickly princess must have some of these for her garden of deadly delights, so she quickly dashes off a note to Florian’s gardener, who misreads her request for “rose seeds” for nose seeds and sends a plant that produces a bunch of weird-looking NOSES instead of pink blossoms.

At first, Amanita finds the proboscis plants amusing, but when they keep her awake all night with ceaseless sniffing, sneezing, and snoring, something must be done! With ire in her eyes, she stomps off to return Florian’s, er, smelly bouquet.

WHAT DO THEY DO?” HE ASKED.

“THEY SMELL GOOD.” THE PRINCESS SAID.

“I MEAN, THEY SMELL WELL!

ANYWAY, THEY’RE GOOD AT SMELLING.”

In Dashka Slater’s latest, Dangerously Ever After (Penguin Group, 2012), this anti-princess’s misadventures, as appropriately portrayed by illustrator Valerie Docampo, offers some hilarity and not a little playful wordplay for older primary students who appreciate a sophisticated princess who walks on the wild and woolly side now and again. Pair this one with Ian Falconer’s Olivia and the Fairy Princesses (see review here) for readers who enjoy a brace of offbeat persnickety princess tales.