The Princess Blog

Though it's been slow going, I've been trying to read all the promo releases from National Tell a Fairy Tale Day while still keeping up with newer books. The next one on my list was Princess of the Beans  by Sarah Beran , a retelling of both "Rapunzel" and "Jack and the Beanstalk."  I thought this was such a creative idea because both stories involve climbing tall towers, but unfortunately, Rapunzel's tower was not located at the top of a beanstalk in this version. Still, it was a sweet little romance story about rescuing a damsel in distress , with some heavy-handed Christian messaging mixed in. As the second book in a series of fairy tale adaptations called The Order of the Fountain, this story begins with a summary of the first book in the series that I found a little convoluted. There are plenty more books in the series after this one, so I hope the world and characters continue to improve. The first few chapters of this book were the roughest. Sa...

Ever since last year's D23 Expo , fans have been waiting with bated breath for more news about Wish , the next original animated Disney classic that celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary from when the company started in 1923. This movie serves as a rare opportunity to celebrate everything we love about Disney's past, including magic, music, animation, and fairy tales with an original plot to boot. With so much focus on live-action remakes , Wish  is a breath of fresh air that will hopefully bring back all the things we love from Disney's peak eras of animation. The movie stars a heroine named Asha, who may or may not become a new Disney Princess , that goes on a quest to save the wishing kingdom from an evil king named Magnifico. Just minutes ago, the first trailer for this highly anticipated film premiered on  Good Morning America . You can watch it below. The trailer boasts beautiful animation as well as a clip of the gorgeous song that superstar Ariana DeBose perf...

We are exactly one month away from Disney's new adaptation of "The Little Mermaid."  After a long stretch of dishing out breadcrumbs to hungry fans , Disney decided that the one-month mark is as good a time as any to release all the content they've been hiding from us. Today has been a monsoon of new content that is personified by the shower of Ariel emojis that rain over the screen when looking up #TheLittleMermaid on Twitter. Why now? The primary reason seems to be that advance tickets have just gone on sale through Fandango . If your local theater is selling tickets, I recommend snatching them up before it's too late. With this ticket sale comes an onslaught of new posters, videos, and merchandise including specialized shops just for this movie on Amazon and ShopDisney . There is so much to "sea" that I thought I would try to compile everything in one place to make it a little easier to digest. First, there are so many new posters that I don't e...

For this year's National Princess Week , I am reopening a new discussion on an old topic. If you haven't read my "Damsel in Distress" Stigma post  from when I started this blog five years ago, I recommend starting there. ( Has it really been five years? ) Since then, it seems like the decline of femininity in mainstream media has gotten increasingly worse. Every new princess is either a Mary Sue warrior princess clone or a "corrected" version of a relatable flawed character from our childhood. Once upon a time, the damsels in distress were the characters we rooted for onscreen, but now they are us, the regular flawed human audience who need to be rescued from poor storytelling. Let's start with the most anticipated upcoming movie, Disney's remake of The Little Mermaid . The original 1989 animated film is my favorite movie of all time, and Ariel will always be my favorite princess. She is a vivacious and energetic redhead who rescues her own prince...

Time Princess  has definitely lost points for originality. Heartwood Mysteries, this month's new visual novel, is yet another murder mystery that takes place in early 20th-century England . This story is lighter than some of the recent grimdark stories it has released since it contains more romance and a potential ending where no one has to die. It has been six months since the game has done a true fairy tale retelling  unless you count Lunar Legend  from last December, which was loosely based on "Beauty and the Beast."  They have been shying farther away from their royalty-inspired roots with each passing year. I still want to know what happened to their story about  Catherine the Great . Regardless, I can appreciate this new release for what it was, especially for its cute gender-bent outfits inspired by Sherlock Holmes . Heartwood Mysteries tells the story of Evelyn Heartwood, a private detective who dresses similarly to Sherlock Holmes but acts very differen...

As a lifelong fan of Disney's adaptation of "The Little Mermaid,"  I was curious when I learned that the upcoming live-action remake  would have a prequel novel. For a fan like me, it seemed like required reading prior to the upcoming movie on May 26th. Would the book be a love letter to fans that expands upon the musical and colorful world that was depicted in the animated series , or would it rewrite history and change everything that Disney has established about their underwater fantasy world? As it turns out, Against the Tide  by J. Elle is very much the latter. Though the author touts herself as a childhood fan of Disney's The Little Mermaid  in the Acknowledgements section at the back of the book, the story proceeds to tear apart everything that Disney has built  over the last 30 years  about the characters, world, and backstory in favor of a more original and darker take. One year before the events of The Little Mermaid , Ariel was a 15-year-old re...

When Disney closes a show on Broadway , they usually retain a version of the two-and-half-hour-long script to sell to schools and community theaters for licensing. This was the case for The Little Mermaid musical , which only lasted for a year and a half at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York and for good reason. I saw this show in 2007 when it was still in previews and felt that the extra hour of songs and dialogue did very little to enhance the story that was told in the original 1989 feature film . Based on what we know so far, it looks like the live-action adaptation coming out next month is going to add a lot more backstory and worldbuilding to justify its two-hour-and-fifteen-minute runtime, which was recently confirmed by AMC . When Disney sells licensing to their shows, there is sometimes a lesser-known version available that takes the script in the opposite direction by making it even shorter than the original film. These are known as Jr. productions. They are cheaper to l...

"The Oracle and the Egg" Once upon a time, a young oracle named Eden lived in a thriving kingdom. Every day, people would line up at her door to tell their fortune with little regard for the toll it took on her health. Oracles lived notoriously short lives as each vision they conjured caused them to convulse with pain and slowly drain their life force. As such, Eden lost her parents at a young age and survived on her own by sharing her unique ability with the people. She was used to the pain that the visions brought and enjoyed it when she could help to prevent bad things from happening. There was one client in particular who she liked seeing most of all, and that was her kingdom's very own Prince Adam. Ever since the first prediction she made for Adam, he grew concerned with the pain that came with her power and stayed by her side holding her hand until she felt better. He often visited her just to see how she was doing without asking for any predictions. One day, Adam c...

Poisoned: Snow White's Story by Mary Mecham  is one of the books I was most excited about from this year's Fairy Tale Day event , especially after reading her excellent "Rumpelstiltskin" retelling that is included with a subscription to her newsletter . I thought a disability-friendly retelling of "Snow White"  was an interesting concept and was eager to see how it would tie into the original fairy tale. The disability elements of the story were handled excellently and clearly had a ton of research and personal experience put into them, but I was a bit surprised by how few fairy tale elements the book contained. The "Snow White" story is rushed through in the first few chapters and is stripped down to its most basic elements to leave time for the story that the author actually wanted to tell. I think the title is a misnomer, particularly after reading another "Snow White" retelling with the same name . This is hardly Snow White's sto...

Fantasy Island  is a recent remake of an older show  that I wasn't really familiar with before last night's episode entitled "Gwenivere of Glendale."  Besides including a name that's one letter off from the spelling of one of my favorite cartoon princesses , the episode's plot was also right up my alley. The series is a story of anthologies about people who come to a magical island that grants them a wish for a day that helps them to learn something new about themselves. It seemed pretty obvious that it was based on an older property closer to The Twilight Zone era since few modern original shows follow a concept like that. In this episode, the main character, Gwen, came to Fantasy Island with a wish to be--you guessed it--a princess. I really liked the way this episode handled the princess wish by exploring the positive and negative aspects of living in a fairy tale. With the island's heavy-handed lessons for its guests, they could have easily gone in a ...

The Shore of Sun's Afterglow  was an ARC I received from Madison McAuley , a relatively new author who promotes her books as historical fiction. I am far from a history buff , but I noticed that this book had very few details to set it in a specific place or time. It contained more of a general knowledge of royalty and kingdoms that could be derived from any fairy tale or Disney movie. Those details don't matter to me, personally, but I would want any historical fiction fans who pick up this book to be aware of that before reading it. It is more of a character-driven story focusing heavily on the lost princess trope  and the universal human desire for love and family. The book is scheduled for release on July 7th, so there is still some time left before it will be available for purchase. It is the second book in a series called Fallen Stars, but it worked fine as a standalone. Amira is an ordinary farm girl who is relatively happy with her life when her friend, Emily, tak...