The Princess Blog

Since the November princess anniversaries are too far away for this year, Disney is setting their sights on other things to celebrate in the coming months. For those of you who read my latest review of a "Sleeping Beauty" retelling yesterday, the timing could not have been more appropriate. Today marks the 65th anniversary of Disney's 1959 animated classic, Sleeping Beauty , and they are celebrating it with some beautiful limited edition merchandise . This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Disney's Beauty and the Beast Broadway musical , which is being celebrated in a big way. Finally, four Disney Princess television shows may or may not still be in production this year, so we will wait with bated breath for updates in the hopes that we can see some of our favorite princesses return on the small screen. Princess Aurora is the featured princess on Shop Disney today , marking the 65th anniversary of her film. There is lots of great merchandise available, but o...

Before she started the inspired Singer Tales series , Deborah Grace White had another series of fairy tale retellings called The Kingdom Tales . This series took some time to find its voice, but I think it found it with Kingdom of Slumber , a retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" with a twist. In this interpretation of the often-retold tale , the princess is cursed to fall into an enchanted sleep during the day, while the rest of the kingdom sleeps all night without ever knowing that she is awake. In addition to its creative twist, the book boasts a beautiful romance and a guest appearance from the dragon Rekavidur, who travels across each Kingdom Tales book as well as Deborah Grace White's original mermaid series, The Vazula Chronicles . Up to this point, I hadn't enjoyed the Kingdom Tales as much as her newer Singer Tales , but this book had a certain something missing from others I've read so far. Like many princesses before her , Princess Azalea was born into a mar...

I have thoroughly enjoyed what I've read so far of the Singer Tales by Deborah Grace White , which is a more innovative and cohesive series than  her previous collection of fairy tale retellings . For my next read, I picked Song of Moonrise  to explore her take on "Little Red Riding Hood," a story often misinterpreted in other adaptations. Ever since the Red Riding Hood  film came out in 2011, almost every new interpretation of this fairy tale turned it into a mystery story about a werewolf curse in the protagonist's family instead of an innocent coming-of-age story about learning who to trust. In fact, I got so frustrated by this trope that I wrote my own adaptation  of the fairy tale back in 2013. While the Singer Tales version of "Little Red Riding Hood" does incorporate werewolves, it does so in a way that stays true to the themes of the story along with a princess twist and a heated romance. Rosa was an adventurous girl living in the forest until her ...

It's a strange irony that many  complaints that animation gurus had about Disney's Wish  also apply to modern anime , which is supposed to be the last salvation for creative freedom in the animated world. With an abundance of new shows each season, Japan provides animation nerds worldwide with a myriad of options for every individual taste. Yet, the vast majority of these shows have had the same basic premise for the last five years or so. The "isekai, or "other world," genre has blown up exponentially in Japan. Almost every new show is about a person from the modern world getting killed by a speeding vehicle and waking up in a vaguely European medieval fantasy world full of magic and spellcasters. This season's offerings are no different. Though there is a wide variety of princess-related shows available, only one of them breaks the current mold and is too simple to be the most appealing of the bunch. Like my favorite anime from last season , 'Tis Tim...

I have a special place in my heart for Melanie Cellier's Four Kingdoms books. Her first novel, The Princess Companion , pulled me down an endless rabbit hole of independently published fairy tale adaptations and author collaborations that resulted in the past seven years of book reviews for my blog. The Abandoned Princess  is the final book in the Return to the Four Kingdoms series , concluding an impressively long and successful run of interconnected fairy tale retellings about princesses. Though there is one more  tie-in duology on the way, this book felt very much like a homecoming from an extended vacation full of adventure, romance, and magic. The Abandoned Princess is also a wonderful and creative reimagining of "Rapunzel"  on its own merits. This book is a heartfelt and emotional journey that is an absolute must-read for anyone familiar with Melanie Cellier's fairy tale retellings. With Easter eggs galore from the other Four Kingdoms books, The Abandon...

Happy New Year, princess fans! When a new year begins, many of us think about things we can do better than the year before. There is no company this notion applies to better than Disney, which has been failing in every direction  now more so than ever. Their latest feature, Wish , was a genuinely solid movie that sadly did not make the profits it deserved. Following its theatrical run, many fans noticed that the concepts presented in the official  Art of Wish  book  would have elevated it from a good movie to a great one. Most of these concepts revolved around love and romance , which has been strategically removed from modern Disney Princess archetypes , despite being a staple of the brand prior to the past decade. Despite some early rumors that Asha might be the daughter of King Magnifico and Queen Amaya, the film's director Chris Buck explained in an interview  why he was adamantly against making her a princess, which may have been another mistake that coul...