Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Canadian book challenge - 21st post

For something completely different, I reviewed a children's book: Robert Munsch's The Paper Bag Princess.  I'm not going to worry too much about spoiling the ending here...

My daughter (5 -- and a half, she adds) liked it the first time around, but not the second time.  I guess because she was somewhat scared of the dragon, even though she knew the dragon would get its comeuppance.  I thought it was a relatively clever inversion of the traditional princess/dragon story.  It was pretty clear that Prince Ronald was indeed a jerk (even from the first illustration) and indeed he is not at all thankful that he was rescued.  Some parents have problems with the princess calling him a bum at the end.  I didn't get too hung up on that.  I did explain to my daughter that it was really too bad that the prince wasn't grateful, etc.  On the whole, I didn't mind the message that fairy tale romances only work if both partners work at it and some princes simply aren't worth marrying.  (In contrast, I loathe Babette Cole's Princess Smartypants where the anti-marriage princess is a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work from the first page.)   I was, however, taken a bit aback by the picture of the naked princess with her clothes burned off before she found the paper bag to wear.  That probably could have been handled a bit differently...

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