Warm Welcome: Frozen: The Christmas Party by Andrea Posner

IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS!

ELSA USES HER MAGIC TO MAKE ICE SCULPTURES!

Since Elsa has invited the entire kingdom of Arendale to her party, everyone has to pitch in on the party prep. Anna provides the goodies, Sven helps decorate their tree, Kristoff prepares to perform the carols, and snowman Olaf bakes the cookies, while Elsa worries that he's getting too close to the oven for his own good. With presents all hidden away and the desserts all done, Elsa thinks it's time to chill out for a while.

"WE'VE WORKED HARD," ELSA TELLS ANNA.

"WE CAN HAVE SOME FUN!"

The royals and their retinue can't resist going outside for some snow time, and the princesses join forces in a grand snowball fight with the villagers who are already outside playing in the new snow.

"SISTERS ARE THE BEST!"

Andrea Posner's The Christmas Party (Disney Frozen) (Step into Reading) (Random House, 2014) offers early readers this Step Into Reading, Level 2 outing with the current most popular characters in the princess panoply. In addition to a sparkly cover and familiar illustrations by the Disney artists, this book boasts a bonus, eight pop-out ornaments featuring the Frozen gang for their readers' own Christmas tree decor.

For more glitzy holiday reading practice, stocking-stuff this one plus Victoria Kann's Pinkalicious: Merry Pinkmas! (Step into Reading, Level 2).

Moving Experience: Princesses On The Run by Smiljana Coh

Princess Antonia has got it all. And that's the problem. She's got elegant princessy gowns crowding her wardrobe. She's got too many books to read in one lifetime, and she's got all kinds of princess stuff cluttering her royal chamber. She's even got plenty of princess girlfriends who are so stuck in their own personal ruts that they can't even work in a playdate:

CINDERELLA WAS ALWAYS BUSY CLEANING....

RAPUNZEL NEVER LEFT HER TOWER....

SNOW WHITE CONSTANTLY HAD HER HANDS FULL, AND SLEEPING BEAUTY WAS ALWAYS TIRED....

Suddenly Princess Antonia has the urge to leave it all behind. She zooms outside, out of the palace for a change and runs into the nearby forest. As she begins to enjoy her freedom, her princess buddies take notice. Rapunzel stops braiding her hair and falls in behind Antonia. Cinderella follows in her classic footwear.

"OUCH!" she cries as she tries to keep up with the two princesses in her signature crystal slippers.

"TAKE OFF THOSE SHOES AND COME WITH US!" CALLS ANTONIA.

Snow White, hanging out the Seven Dwarfs' wet wash, drops her clothespins and follows suit. Sleeping Beauty wipes the sleep out of her eyes and trots drowsily along behind them. The Royal Run picks up a following--Red Riding Hood and the Three Goats Gruff join in and nobody stops until they reach the sea just as the sun is setting. What a view!

"WE TOTALLY SHOULD DO THIS AGAIN!" SAID SNOW WHITE.

"Changes in latitude, changes in attitude," sang Jimmy Buffet, and true to that advice, running away from it all blasts the princesses out of their royal routines. Rapunzel gets a haircut, Sleeping Beauty yens for yoga and finds new energy, and Cinderella and Snow White figure out how to get those chores out of the way in time for personal pursuits, in the spoofy conclusion of Smilyana Coh's Princesses on the Run (RP Kids, 2013), an alternative look at the princess lifestyle. Princess fans will giggle as their favorites break out of their routine, and Coh's fresh and stylized illustrations are a delightful change from the usual pink-tinged royal fluff.  As  Kirkus Reviews summarizes it all, "A prettily conceived and executed design, a decorative Eastern European sensibility and a fairly unconventional storyline make Princess Antonia stand out among the current crop of princesses."

Magical Malfunction: Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde

Chapter 3: A Princess Ought To Be Fearless

(That's just crazy: the only people who are fearless are people who have no imagination.)

Princess Imogene Eustacia Wellington is in an un-princessly snit.

Her parents have invited that pesky Prince Malcolm from the kingdom next door to her thirteenth  birthday party. She didn't like him when he was eleven, and he's only going to be just as annoying this time, only bigger!

And the Queen Mother has assigned her to read a boring book, The Art of Being a Princess, fourteen chapters, one smarmy chapter a day, before her birthday, beginning with The Foreword. (Are you kidding? Nobody reads the foreword.)

Princess Imogene has some fun writing snarky comments after each chapter heading, but as for actually reading, she makes it only as far as the opening sentence--One should always strive to be the sort of princess about whom it is said, "She was as good as she was beautiful,"--before ditching the book. She's not feeling particularly beautiful (her hair is impossible), and she's not in the mood to be good, either, as she sneaks out of the castle and goes for a walk. Suddenly, she hears a little voice from somewhere.

"Hey, Princess!"

Princess Imogene realizes that there's a frog on a stereotypical lily pad talking to her. And that frog has a  very strange story--and a vaguely familiar request:

"A witch puts a spell on a prince, turns the prince into a frog.  The only way to break the spell is if a princess  comes along and...you know... 

Don't worry, Princess.  I got my clothes on. They changed right long with me!"

"A Princess Is Always Kind and Helpful--and Fearless," the book had said, so Imogene puckers up and the frog puckers up, insofar as a frog can, and the princess kisses the frog.

The frog turns into a boy--a boy who is NOT and has never been a prince, and that's not the worst of it. It seems the frog omitted one important point in his request: when he turns back into a boy, Imogene becomes a frog in his stead.

And so begins the most interesting fourteen days in Frog Princess Imogene's young life, as she joins the love-snockered farmer's daughter, Luella, hoping to talk her into taking her back to the castle so her parents can deal with the frog problem. But Luella, although kind, has other interests, namely following the "cute" Bertie off with a troupe of actors who promise her a starring role. But Luella soon learns that boys lie and will say anything to get a free washerwoman and cook, and poor Imogene finds herself part of a comedy act--A Boy and His Talking Frog--as they tour from village to village. Being a princess is beginning to look like a better deal all along to the frogged Imogene and it looks like the ditsy and romantically besotted Luella is her only hope to make it back to the castle.

Perhaps the author inherited her comedic writing skills from her mother, who provided her with the perfectly alliterated name, but however she came into them, Vivian Vande Velde is one of the foremost purveyors of the funny and fanciful fractured fairy tale, and her latest does not disappoint.  Our grumpy 'tweener princess Imogene learns a lot about the ways of the medieval world during her coming-of-age days as a captive frog, a time in which she comes to appreciate some of those virtues she formerly spurned.  Even the clueless Luella comes through in the end, returning her to her kingdom and, with a little bit of intellectual assistance from the Queen, comes up with the key to solving her dilemma of  how to become her princessly self without turning another person into a frog in the bargain.

Vande Velde's tongue-in-cheek storytelling, with each chapter an ironic exposition of the chapter headings of The Art of Being A Princess, develops believably within its fairy tale premise, each character fittingly drawn, with the sparklingly humorous dialogue for which the author is well known. Her latest,  Frogged (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), forthcoming April 2, shows Vande Velde at the top of her craft in a funny, freewheeling, fractured fairy tale whose happily-ever-after ending can't help but delight middle readers.

Some of Vivian Vande Velde's other comic walks on the fantastical side include her stuck-inside-the-video game spoofs, User Unfriendly, Deadly Pink, and Heir Apparent, and her body-switching, talking pooch tale, Smart Dog.

In the Forest of the Night:... Sleep Like A Tiger by Mary Logue

ONCE THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL WHO DIDN'T WANT TO GO TO SLEEP.

SHE TOLD HER MOTHER, "I'M NOT TIRED."

SHE TOLD HER FATHER, "I'M JUST NOT SLEEPY."

Uneasy lies the head that wears this crown. Our princess is simply too busy to go to bed. She rides her scooter; she plays with her stuffed tiger and his friends and protests that she's not going to sleep.

The royal parents nod their crowned heads as they offer her favorite doll and The Little Prince for a bedtime read, but the princess protests that she is  wide awake.

Wisely, the king and queen opt for gradualism.

HER PARENTS SAID THAT WAS FINE.

BUT SHE HAD TO PUT HER PAJAMAS ON.

SHE SHOULD WASH HER FACE AND BRUSH HER TEETH.

IT FELT GOOD.

"DOES EVERYONE IN THE WORLD GO TO SLEEP?" SHE ASKED.

The royal couple nod and describe how their dog and cat are snoozing already. The Princess doesn't give up that easily. She cites bats, who fly at night. The King and Queen agree, but point out that bats fold their wings and snooze all day. The Princess persists, asking about whales and snails, bears and--the tiger:

"HE FINDS SOME SHADE AND SLEEPS.
THAT WAY HE STAYS STRONG"

Reassuring the Princess that she can stay awake if she chooses, her parents leave her alone with her thoughts of slumbering creatures. Her crisp sheets are like a nest, cozy as her dog's couch, warm as the cat snoozing before the fire. Soon she is drifting into sleepiness like the whale, hanging it up like the bats, slipping into sleepiness like the hibernating bear, and so, lying down with the warm sleeping tiger...

... FELL FAST ASLEEP.

Mary Logue's lyrical narrative soothes, but Pamela Zagarenski's illustrations take this little royal bedtime tale into the lands of dreams with startlingly beautiful surreal illustrations that the poet William Blake might have envied. Zagarenski's princess is both real child and stubbornly iconic bedtime resister, and her tiger morphs from plush toy to sleeping majesty in a way that seems only natural in the sweep of this gorgeous picture book. Zagarenski's endpapers tell it all, with the opening spread offering a gigantic yellow sun illuminating a white tiger on top of the boxcar of a disjointed train on its way to the closing endpapers which show  a tower window with the Princess asleep with her toy tiger, with the white tiger still riding that night train under a silver moon inscribed "Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night."

Pamela Zagarenski received a 2013 Caldecott Honor Award for her collaboration with Mary Logue on Sleep Like a Tiger (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). As the Washington Post's reviewer writes, "Set against Caldecott Honor medalist Pamela Zagarenski's gloriously soft-toned dreamscapes of moons and stars and toys and towns, the lyrical text magnifies the magical mood."

Wanted: Personal Dragon: Lovabye Dragon by Barbara Joosse

ONCE THERE WAS A GIRL, AN ALL-ALONE GIRL, IN HER OWN LITTLE BED

IN HER OWN LITTLE ROOM

IN HER OWN LITTLE CASTLE

WHO DREAMED OF A DRAGON FOR A FRIEND.

In her loneliness Girl sheds silver tears, a trickle of tears which flow down through the land until they find the cave of a dragon, "snore-sleeping" until he awakes with start--GLUK!

Somehow Dragon knows what those tears mean and follows their silver traces back to the little room in the little castle, where the two are together.

"I FOUND YOU!" ROARED DRAGON.

GIRL WAS LITTLE.  DRAGON BIGGLE.
BUT THEY WERE JUST THE SAME SIZE...
IN THE MIDDLE.

It's a forever friendship made in that middle kingdom of the imagination in Barbara Joose's latest, Lovabye Dragon (Candlewick, 2012). To Joose's Caldecott-winning lyric narrative style, Randy Cecil's stylishly abstracted illustrations, executed in dark blues with a strokes of gold and a dash of humor, add just the right touch of fantasy to this story of an uncommon friendship for a lonely dragon and a very lonely girl.

Joose knows how to use language playfully and poetically, painting her own pictures in the mind, and this story, sweet but never saccharine, belongs with some of her other tales dealing with the nature of love, her Caldecott-winning Mama, Do You Love Me? and her sibling-rivalry-soothing little gem, I Love You the Purplest.Publishers Weekly gives this one a thumbs up and calls it "a lullaby of a book." After all, who wouldn't sleep well with Dragon's tail warmly wrapped around you?

Tiara Trade: The VERY Fairy Princess Takes the Stage by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton

HI! I'M GERALDINE. I'M A VERY FAIRY PRINCESS.

I KNOW I'M A FAIRY PRINCESS BECAUSE I FEEL IT INSIDE.

A SPARKLY FEELING OF JUST KNOWING IN MY HEART.

Gerry makes sure that she lives up to the standard of being regal--wearing full, twirly skirts, wings, and a crown whenever she can--and (noblesse oblige)! helping others solve problems whenever and wherever they occur.

But Gerry's sparkly feeling is threatened when her ballet teacher Madame Danielle overlooks her obvious qualifications (and fairy princess accessories) and chooses her classmate Tiffany to play the title role in The Crystal Princess. And to add insult to injury, Gerry is assigned the totally embarrassing role as Court Jester, complete with baggy, jingly costume, silly shoes with curled-up toes, and an outrageous three-pointed hat with bells. And there are no sparkles anywhere!

Gerry' parents point out that everyone has an important role to play and that she looks adorable in her costume, but Gerry's mirror is no magic mirror, and she knows she looks ridiculous. And worst of all, she looks like a BOY!

Summoning all her princessy dignity, though, Gerry drags through rehearsals, learning her part and doing her best to be a good Jester while suffering as she sees Tiffany trying out her shimmery princess gown and glittering tiara. Gerry consoles herself as she dresses for the big performance by concealing her own sparkly crown under her silly cap of bells.

At least she's still a princess inside.

Then comes the big night. Gerry has to admit that Tiffany looks the part, gorgeous in her glamorous costume, a ballet princess who deserves the hand of the prince in the final wedding scene. But then, disaster strikes:

THE PRINCE IS WAITING FOR HER.

HE LIFTS HER VEIL, AND TIFFANY'S SHINY CRYSTAL TIARA TOPPLES RIGHT OFF HER HEAD. THEN PRINCE RAMONE ACCIDENTALLY STEPS ON IT.

EVERYONE GASPS.

MADAME DANIELLE IS HORRIFIED. THEN SHE LOOKS RIGHT AT ME.

TIFFANY LOOKS SO SAD.... AND A CRYSTAL PRINCESS REALLY NEEDS TO SPARKLE!

And, of course, Geraldine knows just where to find a replacement tiara, and graciously, as a true princess would, she takes her own from under her silly cap and places it on Tiffany's head, saving the show and bringing down the house.

In this second book in the series, Julie Andrews' and Emma Hamilton's just published The Very Fairy Princess Takes the Stage(Little, Brown, 2011) has everything for fans of ballet and princess stories--appropriately pastel pictures by noted illustrator Christine Davenier and a modern princess heroine who knows just how to be as gracious as a real royal.

For a dramatic pair, read this one with Ian Falconer's hilarious Olivia Acts Out, in which Olivia hams it up and steals the show as Cow #3.

Fortitude Triumphs: Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdoch

Trudy began weeping even before she awoke the next morning. "What is it?" Tips whispered.

Trudy pulled away. "I don't want to be your family. I want to be your wife!"

Gently, Tips shook his head. "We haven't talked in six years. This is my life here---"

Wisdom opened her eyes. "Where are we?"

"It doesn't matter," Trudy said bitterly. Tip, overcome, stared at the floor.

"Doesn't matter?" said Wisdom. "It's the future of Montagne. It's my future, my sister's, it's...."

Trudy glared at her. "It's my future, too! My future is over. You stole my future."

Wisdom recoiled. "How dare you!"

"How dare I? What's that, princess talk? You can have anything you want, in the whole world. Why did you have to take him?"

"I didn't "take" him. I love him."

Happiness is many things. In Catherine Gilbert Murdoch's forthcoming Wisdom's Kiss (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), the human quest for happiness is played out from the multiple perspectives of its characters--Queen Mother Benevolence (nee Princess Ben), her spinsterish older daughter Temperance, her ditsy and adventurous younger daughter Wisdom (Dizzy), childhood sweethearts Tips the miller's son and Trudy (Fortitude), an orphaned kitchen wench of dubious lineage, the avaricious Queen Wilhelmina of Farina, her effete son Roger, dispatched to woo Temperance but enamored of Wisdom, and Felis El Gato, the showman who apprentices Tips for his agility and takes him away from Trudy and off to the court of Wilhelmina of Farina.

It all begins when Queen Wilhelmina sends her dim son Roger to woo Temperance in order to acquire the riches of Montagne for her kingdom, but when he chooses instead the anti-princess Dizzy, the unwieldy plot swings into motion, sweeping up the beauteous (and strangely clairvoyant) Trudy as a substitute lady-in-waiting along the way. Wisdom and Tips fall into a star-crossed love; Queen Wilhemina is unable to conceal her evil intentions; and Queen Benevolence (nee Princess Ben), reviving her renounced wizardly skills, takes a page from Juliet's faux suicide scene to confound the dastardly Wilhelmina's imperial lust and unite the true lovers, to the vast dismay of the thus lovelorn Roger and Trudy. Then, with a Deus ex machina resolution involving a magically-driven hot air balloon escape, Trudy's clairvoyance, and assorted transformations, including that of a doppelganger cat, it all concludes with a happy-ever-after for all...and, incidentally, the historical genesis of several of Europe's best-known fairy tales.

Just your average teenage love triangle novel--with appended glossary and author's notes, that is.

Told not in straight-forward narration, but in eight parallel literary sources--encyclopedia entries, bombastic memoirs, journal postings, various epistles and missives, and a sixteenth-century drama--the story almost founders under the weight of its clever complexity, saved by an enticing pair of romances, a cut-throat royal rivalry, and curiously talented black cat. If the plot sometimes struggles to move forward under the weight of its several narrative threads, it becomes apparent that it is through their different takes on the same events that the diverse characters are developed in what is ultimately revealed as a supremely character-driven plot.

Sometimes confusing, occasionally tedious, and ultimately delightfully satisfying, this novel is not one for the reader seeking a light, quick read. Murdoch, author of the poignant and hilarious Dairy Queen trilogy and this novel's prequel, Princess Ben, nevertheless emerges as the real magician behind this literary legerdemain. "An ebullient fairy tale," as Kirkus Reviews has it, this novel joins Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted and Fairest in the pantheon of the popular young adult genre of plucky-princess fractured fairy tales.

The Pretender Princess: Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt

Thanks to my teen reviewer, Julia Teal, for this, her second, guest blog.

“Tiaras, diamond bracelets. The job perks sure beat free Mountain Dew at Pets Charming.”

These are the first thoughts racing through Desi Bascomb’s mind when a chartreuse-haired woman named Meredith appears in her bubble-filled bathroom, claiming she has magical potential, whatever that is, and offering her a surrogate position at Façade, a firm that subs out talented girls to princesses in major need of reasonably regal doubles while they take some royal R & R.

Filled with visions of palatial balls and royal feasts, Desi can’t help but agree, signing a contract right on the spot and imagining this to be a dream come true. One test run at the Las Vegas Venetian later, and she’s realizing this dream might be more like a noble nightmare! No, it turns out being a princess is a lot harder than it looks when the job description includes crash diets on dates and vegetables, performing traditional tribal dances, and even dabbling in a love triangle.

In this light and humorous parody of the well-worn plot line of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, Desi’s plight continues as she struggles to switch from handing out fliers while costumed as a groundhog at the local pet store to brunching with the fictional Prince Karl of Fenmark. Thrown into one sticky sub situation after another, she tries to do the best she can, but a series of unfortunate events seem to be forever leaving her on Meredith’s bad side. After all, it’s not her fault she had to stand up to Princess Elsa’s grandmother, or that Princess Ama Yakinomi spotted her when posing as her double. Desi is totally giving the princess gig all she's got.

Watch as this princess pretender tries hard to blend her two worlds together in Lindsey Leavitt’s Princess for Hire (Hyperion, 2010), a girl-empowering fairy tale gone wrong written along the lines of Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries including some of the same laugh-out-loud funny lines, and relatable-to-us-commoners blunders that make us realize that being in the palatial limelight isn’t always a pretty-in-pink fantasy.

Lindsey Leavitt, who admits to having worked as both a substitute teacher and homecoming princess, combines her work resume into a regal romp which will have readers yearning for her promised-soon sequel.