The Princess Test

Fairy tales remind me of those commercials for prescription medications. With the promise of a more fulfilling life, they ought to come with a warning of potentially serious side effects. With that in mind, The Princess Test, Gail Carson Levine's humorous and engaging take on the old fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, has left me torn between delight and disappointment.

The delight: Levine writes with a clever voice that engages the reader with tender affection for the characters. Levine's craft is delightful.

The disappointment: Perhaps my feminist views take this tale too seriously; however, it's the fairy tale genre and its assumptions about the roles of men and women that bother me. Although Prince Nicholas knows next to nothing about the beautiful, simple, and essentially helpless Lorelei, he is convinced that she is the woman of his dreams. Lorelei is a naïve little girl in a young woman's body, and because it is a fairy tale, the reader to lured into wanting to see her and the prince live happily ever after before she ever learns how to be an adult. So, why has this genre endured after hundreds of years? Perhaps human nature simply wants to believe that life, love and happiness are black and white.

Now that I've registered my cynical complaint, I must add that I grew up loving fairy tales and the romantic delusional expectations they set; and somehow I survived thanks to my pragmatic parents. Would I read more of Levine's works? Absolutely. I would recommend this book to our daughters and nieces, but not without a healthy dose of modeling and talk about the true reality of love and relationships.

Writing Magic

I'm not sure why exactly, but I picked up a copy of Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly at the school book fair in October. I've never read Ella Enchanted or any of Levine's other popular modern takes on traditional fairy tales. Maybe it was that the English teacher in me wanted to take in the advice of a professional writer. Perhaps I was lured with my own fantasy of one day writing a book. Whatever reason, this how-to-write text has charmed me.

Though the audience for Writing Magic is kids who read and enjoy Levine's work, this book can be equally useful for adults who want to have fun imagining and writing. Each chapter concisely addresses a different topic valuable to the writer's craft and gives the reader a variety of suggestions to start writing immediately. That Levine discusses her own process in crafting her published works has also inspired me to become better acquainted with the magic that has made her a beloved author among children of all ages.