Night Shift Sparkle: Part-Time Princess: Girl by Day, Princess by Night by Deborah Underwood

DURING THE DAY I AM A REGULAR GIRL.

I HAVE TO TAKE SPELLING TESTS.

I AM NOT ALLOWED TO JUMP OFF THE HIGH DIVE.

BUT AT NIGHT AFTER MY MY MOM TUCKS ME IN,

I BECOME A PRINCESS AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT...
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Being night-shift royalty is a pretty good gig. A sparkling crown appears on her head, and she gets to dress in appropriately pink gowns and ride around  in pink pumpkin coaches.

But the princess is no wuss. When circumstances require, she becomes a heroine. This part-time princess is up to sliding down a fire pole in her frilly pink gown,donning monogrammed gear, and leading fire-fighters in putting out a palace blaze. She soothes a dangerous dragon with tea and sympathy for his broken crayons, and even faces the most perilous of all challenges, co-hostessing the royal ball with the Queen Mother, both of them dressed in starlit gowns with sparkles in their hair. A princess must have superior social skills, too, and when a troupe of trolls crash the party, she signals the band to crank up their favorite dance tunes to get their trollish toes happily twinkling.

There's even a cute prince in attendance who catches her eye, but she wisely defers that thought until later:

MAYBE I'LL MARRY HIM WHEN I GROW UP, BUT RIGHT NOW I'M TOO BUSY.

But in Deborah Underwood's latest, Part-time Princess (Philomel, 2013), this princess has to punch herself out when the alarm clock goes off and return to her prosaic day job. Could it all be no more than a nice nighttime dream?  Except... when Mom comes in to get her up for school, she notices that they both still have a trace of that royal sparkle in their hair.

Underwood lets a bit of her night life into our girl's day shift in this humorous look at princessly aspirations, lightly and playfully illustrated by Cambria Evans with just the right touch of  pastel fancy. Perfect for pairing with Julie Andrew's feisty The Very Fairy Princess and sequels.

No Snacking on Princesses! You Can't Eat a Princess by Gillian Rogerson

IT'S ALMOST TIME FOR MY BIRTHDAY!" SAID PRINCESS SPAGHETTI.

"IS EVERYTHING READY?"

The royal board is bursting with the goodies arranged for the party--chocolate everything! Sandwiches, milkshakes, and, of course, chocolate cake.

But the party can't start without the royal decree, and Kingcake is not on his throne! A proper princess can't party without her papa.

Alas! The King has been abducted by awful aliens, and his royal guards decline the honor of giving chase and make themselves scarce, pleading susceptibility to interspace infections! Not to be deterred, Princess Cupcake launches the royal rocket herself, and at the controls, she finally zooms in on the proper planet to rescue her royal parent.

"HEL-LO!" SAID THE ALIENS. "WE LOVE PRINCESSES HERE!"

"I LIKE MINE ON TOAST WITH KETCHUP!" SAID ONE.

"YOU CAN'T EAT PRINCESSES!!" SAID PRINCESS SPAGHETTI.

The Princess notes that one of the stalk-eyed aliens is wearing her father's crown and suspects the worst. She finds her father is a surprisingly mellow mood.

"I'M SWIMMING! THE WATER'S LOVELY AND WARM!" HE SAYS.

Well, of course it's warm. In fact the "pool" is a very large soup pot and there's a fire sizzling underneath it.

"GET MY FATHER OUT OF THAT POT RIGHT NOW!"

NOW!"

A true princess has powers, especially one who knows the magic of chocolate, and it's a happy ending in princessland in Gillian Rogerson's lively little tale of princess derring-do, You Can't Eat a Princess! (Price, Stern, Sloan, 2010). Sara McIntyre's clever cartoons are just the right royal accessory to make this tale a fine addition to the princess shelf for fans of the genre.

Dogged Devotion: Princess Zelda and the Frog by Carol Gardner

"WHAT WILL YOU GIVE ME, SILKY PANTS," CROAKED THE UGLY FROG, "IF I GET YOUR GOLDEN BALL?"

"I'LL GIVE YOU MY CROWN, MY DIAMOND CHOKER, AND A GIFT CARD FOR A MASSAGE," SAID PRINCESS ZELDA.

"NO, THANKS, SWEET CAKES," HE SAID. "IF YOU WILL LET ME EAT FROM YOUR GOLDEN BOWL, DRINK FROM YOUR GOLDEN GOBLET, SLEEP ON YOUR GOLDEN PILLOW, AND PROMISE TO BE MY BFF, I WILL GET YOUR BALL."

In Carol Gardner's and Shane Young's just-published Princess Zelda and the Frog (Feiwel & Friends, 2011), the frog drives a hard bargain with his princess just as in the classic fairy tale, The Frog Prince. But in this breezy modernized version, the beautiful and delicate princess role is played by Zelda, in all her bulbous bulldog beauty, gussied up in perfect pink princess style in silk gown and lavender tiara, while her rescuer/BFF wannabe, the Frog in the well, is played by an equally photogenic bulldog, attired in what is obviously a green velveteen costume which leaves his mutt's mug exposed beneath the froggy hood.

In cleverly staged photos, Shane Young has his super-model bulldogs replicate the classic story fairly faithfully, while Carol Gardner's witty modern text ("See you later, Sweetums," croaks the Frog after slurping up the banquet's fine dishes from Zelda's golden bowl) gives this retelling the delicious flavor of full-blown parody.

The Frog is persistent in enforcing Princess Zelda's promise, and that night, when he gains entrance to Zelda's bedchamber, he settles down to snore rather grossly, and Zelda, already an insomniac, fears that she will never sleep again in close quarters with such a bedfellow.

But after all, this is a fairy tale.

A FEELING OF PEACE WASHED OVER HER.

AND BEFORE LONG THE THE PRINCESS WAS LULLED INTO A DEEP SLEEP HERSELF.

"A promise is a promise"--even for petulant princesses--is the evergreen theme of this humorous reprise of the old tale, and in true virtue-rewarded form, Frog is restored to his true nature by the keeping of the promise to be the princess' best friend. And--you guessed it--by morning's light he is transformed into, well, as handsome a prince as a boy bulldog can be, complete with his own crown and silken threads in a happy, BFFs-forever ending in the best fairy tale tradition.

Photographer-designer Young stages the book's illustrations in a charming grade-school play format, with poster-painted-style backdrops and cut-out clouds hanging down on wires in the outdoor scenes, while posing his patient pooches in all sorts of hilarious vignettes in their improbable costumes. It's a rollicking romp through the Brothers Grimm's tale that is sure to tickle the giggles of the picture book crowd, especially those who have already met the traditional tale. And for those who prefer their fairy tales on the fractured side, pair this one with Jon Scieszka's very funny {THE FROG PRINCE, CONTINUED BY Scieszka, Jon(Author)}The Frog Prince, Continued.[paperback]Puffin Books(Publisher).

My Fair Fairy: The Very Fairy Princess by Julie Andrews

HI! I'M GERALDINE.

I'M A FAIRY PRINCESS.

I KNOW YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE ME, BUT I CAN TELL YOU I AM.

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

There are lots of little girls who love fairies. There are lots of little girls who love princess stories and like to pretend they are the ones wearing the crown.

But Geraldine IS a fairy and she IS a princess. Her parents and siblings are just ordinary, plain-Jane folks, but Geraldine just knows she's been blessed with the fairy dust. She never goes out without her crown ("fairy princesses are always presentable"), and her big decision each morning is whether to wear princess pink or royal purple. She can turn ordinary flapjacks into fairy pancakes with fairy dust on top with a wave of her wand (otherwise known as a butter knife). Her doubting best friend Delilah is counseled with good advice: "You can be anything you want to be. You just have to let your sparkle out."

There are problems, of course, even for princesses with powers.

FLYING IS NOT ALLOWED IN CLASS, SO AT SCHOOL I HANG MY WINGS UP IN MY CUBBY.

MISS PYM SAYS FAIRY PRINCESSES DON'T FIDGET OR INTERRUPT.

BUT HOW ELSE CAN I BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR PROBLEMS TO SOLVE? SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO SPEAK UP.--LIKE WHEN OUR CLASS PET, HOUDINI THE HAMSTER, ESCAPES!

It's a hard-knock royal life with skinned knees and lots of bumps along the road, one that makes a girl weary well before bedtime, and as she tells us, "Fairy princesses need lots of beauty sleep to RECHARGE their sparkle!" but our girl is up to the job. Geraldine is a girl with plenty of self esteem, in musical star Julie Andrew's latest picture book tale, The Very Fairy Princess (Little, Brown, 2010), co-authored by daughter Emma Hamilton, with a bit of fairy dust to sparkle up the illustrations of Christine Davenier. Fans of Fancy Nancy and her sister pinkanistas, not to mention all those readers of the fairy princess persuasion, will all go for Geraldine and her undeniable sparkle.

Light Romance: Princess Hyacinth (The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated) by Florence Parry Heide

Princess Hyacinth had a problem.

Well, you are saying, everyone has a problem.

But this was an unusual problem.

Hyacinth's problem is with gravity. This force of nature apparently has no power on her body. Unless weighted down or tethered, she FLOATS, up and up and up. Inside the castle it's just a nuisance, having to retrieve her from the ceiling with the royal ladders from time to time. But when Princess Hyacinth ventures outside, the King and Queen have made sure that she has diamond pebbles sewn into her socks and gold nuggets sewn into her hems and a huge, heavy jewel-encrusted crown tightly jammed down to her eyebrows. Going for a walk in the royal park is itself a weighty matter, and Hyacinth is forced to watch the children of the kingdom splash in the pool while she sits at the window, hopefully wearing her swimsuit, seat-belted to a heavy bench.

As she watches, Hyacinth is strangely drawn to a Boy, one with a beautiful kite with a painting of her own crown on it, soaring freely through the sky. And the Boy himself is strangely drawn to her.

"I like your kite," said Princess Hyacinth.

"I like your crown," said the Boy.

But Princess Hyacinth is a girl whose heart yearns to be free, and one day as she trudges heavily through the park, burdened by her ponderous but protective poundage, the sight of a balloon man gives her an idea.

"If I took off my princess clothes, you could tie a string to my ankle and I could float." Since she was the Princess, she got her way.

"I feel like a balloon!" she cried.

The balloon man walked through the park and Princess Hyacinth bobbed along with the balloons.

It was pretty exciting.

She swooshed and she swirled, zigged and zagged and zigzagged, zoomed and careened and cartwheeled. She did handsprings and headstands, flip-flops and fandangos.

It was the most fun she had ever had in her life.

But, of course, the inevitable happens at last. Alas and alack, distracted, the balloon man drops the string that tethers the Princess to earth, and, clad only in her bloomered underwear, she floats away, up, up, UP, away from the castle and her horrified parents. Even though a bit anxious, Hyacinth has never felt so free.

But the Boy and his kite are there, and as the King and Queen despair that their daughter is lost forever, Hyacinth and the kite come together and the young hero reels her in, back to earth.

But once free, always free for this princess. With the Boy and his kite at her service, she resolves to fly freely every day.

The problem about the floating was never solved, and that's too bad.

But Princess Hyacinth was never bored again.

Author of the quirky classic The Shrinking of Treehorn, the story of a boy who daily finds himself growing smaller while no one else seems to notice, Florence Parry Heide has teamed up with award-winning illustrator Lane Smith in her just-published Princess Hyacinth (The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated). An artist whose similarly quirky work has often graced the writing of Jon Scieszka, Smith's work here seems perfect for this off-beat but meaningful tale of a light-hearted princess who longs to escape the burdens of her office.