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Original Title: | Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of Her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection, in Four Parts |
ISBN: | 0618959718 (ISBN13: 9780618959716) |
Edition Language: | English |
Characters: | Princess Benevolence, Prince Florian, Queen Sophia, Lady Beatrix |
Setting: | Montagne |
Literary Awards: | South Carolina Book Award Nominee for Young Adult Book Award (2011) |
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Hardcover | Pages: 344 pages Rating: 3.75 | 17568 Users | 1327 Reviews
Itemize Based On Books Princess Ben
Title | : | Princess Ben |
Author | : | Catherine Gilbert Murdock |
Book Format | : | Hardcover |
Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 344 pages |
Published | : | March 18th 2008 by HMH Books for Young Readers |
Categories | : | Fantasy. Young Adult. Fairy Tales. Romance. Fiction. Magic |
Explanation In Favor Of Books Princess Ben
"My gown suited me as well as I could ever hope, though I could not but envy the young ladies who would attract the honest compliments of the night. My bodice did not plunge as dramatically as some, and no man--no man I would ever want to meet, surely--could fit his hands round my waist. What I lacked in beauty I would simply have to earn with charm..."Benevolence is not your typical princess--and Princess Ben is certainly not your typical fairy tale.
With her parents lost to assassins, Princess Ben ends up under the thumb of the conniving Queen Sophia. Starved and miserable, locked in the castle's highest tower, Ben stumbles upon a mysterious enchanted room. So begins her secret education in the magical arts: mastering an obstinate flying broomstick, furtively emptying the castle's pantries, setting her hair on fire... But Ben's private adventures are soon overwhelmed by a mortal threat to her kingdom. Can Ben save the country and herself from tyranny?
Rating Based On Books Princess Ben
Ratings: 3.75 From 17568 Users | 1327 ReviewsCriticize Based On Books Princess Ben
After reading Dairy Queen and The Off Season by this same author I really had no idea what to expect in this book. The transition to fantasy seemed easy. I still enjoyed this book after the second time I read it. I like Ben and enjoyed seeing her grow from a self-pitying but soft-hearted girl to a determined ruler.I've always liked fairy-tales and if anything this book has made me like them even more. Ben is a dynamic protagonist. She was not raised as a real princess so she is more relatable.This earned 5 stars from me! Princess Ben is a wonderful girl/young women empowerment book. The main reason is the fact that the author doesn't pound the reader over the head with the girl empowerment. Your average fairy tale tends to make the female leads rather pathetic. I haven't read the original Grimm versions lately but just one example that comes to mind is Rumplestiltskin (no idea how to spell that. . . .). Anyway, Princess Ben has all the parts of a great fairy tale. Dead mother,
I was really disappointed in this book. The premise is great. I was excited at the prospect of a protagonist who, while a princess, is not skinny and beautiful. I was expecting something that would go against the "only the beautiful people get the guy" mindset so common in our society; however, the book did the absolute opposite, and it was only once she changed (lost weight, became more beautiful and ladylike and submissive, etc) that she was able to get the guy, earn respect, and save the day.
I really liked this book. Until the end, but I'll get to that later. I love novelizations of fairy tales, and this was a good one with a bit of a twist. It was part Sleeping Beauty, part Cinderella, with some Jack and the Bean Stalk thrown in for fun. I liked the old fashioned verbage and was glad I was reading on my Kindle which made looking up words a breeze (there were quite a few).Princess Ben starts out a bit spoiled, but I like how her character develops through the story, and I think the
Despite my dislike of these realistic (and totally inaccurate) covers, this book proved to be quite a delight. Princess Ben isn't your run of the mill princess. She hasn't been trained for princessery, due to her mother's adamant stance against it, and only because her aunt proved to be barren and widowed does the throne fall to her. Still, she's powerless as well as being completely clumsy, unlikable, incompetent, and a glutton. And no, she's not the kind of oh-that's-so-cute, freckles across
Started to write this here and realized it was developed enough to be worth posting on my blog. So here is my post:Ive read, loved, studied, and taught fairy tales all my life. Every three years I co-teach a graduate school fairy tale course and, since 1990, Ive been doing a Cinderella unit with my fourth graders. So Im always interested in new versions of these old tales as well as original ones. At the same time, because many of these come up short for me, I am a wary reader of them,
I remember something Diana Wynne Jones wrote that went something along the lines of this:"In Fantasyland, a princess is either a1. Wimp, or 2. Rebellious spunky swordswoman with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her tip-tilted nose."Needless to say, the rebellious-princess character has become something of a cliché. So it's quite refreshing when an author takes this setup (of an "ordinary princess" rejecting the frou-frou court, then escaping and having grand adventures) and can make
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