Title: The
Unruly Princess and other stories
Author: Damaris West
Review: To give
a children’s book a good and thorough review, I felt it necessary to read it to
my kids, ages 6, 3 1\2 and 20 months. My
three year old daughter is a tomboy princess. She loves pink, princesses and
anything girly but can roughhouse with her brother’s friends as well. My six
year old son is a boy from head to toe. His life is cars, Legos and using his
imagination.
I started by reading The
Unruly Princess to my son and daughter.
My son was off playing with his toys the second he heard the word
“princess” but I was able to keep my three year old interested.
The Unruly Princess is
about a young girl who is more of a tomboy than a princess. She get dirty, loves to throw rocks at the
swans, shouts louder than most men and she refuses to do anything that most
girls generally do her age. One day her
cousin, a boy, comes to live with her family. He is a rough boy that loves to
throw rocks at everything from animals to people. One day the princess decides she doesn’t like
what she is seeing and decides to show him how to act. They both grow up and one day the King’s
brother comes to get his son and finds him a changed man.
The story is simple,
sweet and easy to read but I felt it not interesting enough for adults to enjoy
while reading to their young children and the illustrations are below the
standards I have seen in many other children's short stories and books.
There are six short
stories in the book and out of the six the Unruly Princess in the most
competent with its descriptive language.
The next short story, The
Best Of The F.D. Lambert Collection.
It is the story of a young boy who is given a display cabinet to take
care of and inside he creates an exhibition using items he finds around his
house or other items family members have given to him. I thought my six year
old son would love this story but just as before he was uninterested and I
found myself hoping something would happen with the cabinet but instead it was
all about what the little boy collected and that was pretty much the story.
The next story, Lucy's
Treat. The story is about a little
girl named Lucy and how disappointed she becomes when weather prevents her from
having the perfect day. Her parents come
up with a brilliant idea and turn a closet into her own little space. That is the story. There is nothing
extraordinary that happens or that is noteworthy. Nothing more than a simple
story about a girl upset about a storm and her mom being there to save the day.
The story gave did me a wonderful idea if we ever have a storm or terrible
weather, but other than that, nothing more and nothing less than a simple if
somewhat uninteresting story.
The next story, The
Gift. It is about Rebecca a little
girl who grew attached to a gift her grandfather gave her before he passed
away. That gift being a stuffed kingfish.
Rebecca's parents throw away the falling apart kingfish and Rebecca is
so angry about what happened to the kingfish she runs away.
This journey is filled
with terrible grammar, misused words and awful spelling. I tried hard to read it to my children but
found myself confused by the poor grammar.
For example in one passage the author writes, "She 1ived her
despair, like a part in a play which occupied all her waking hours." Live should be spelled with an L not the
number 1. Another example is as follows, "As well as Policemen abmonish.
Parents are angry once their fright is over." That is how it is spelled
and written in the book. The Gift is riddled with incomplete sentences,
spelling errors and words that are not really even words. I couldn't finish this story because I
couldn't understand it due to it being evidently poorly edited if edited at
all.
The next story, The Talking Tree, which I personally
enjoyed because it a story of life and appeals to adults as well. The story is about a boy named Michael, a
lonely boy who was scolded by his mother again and he finds himself running
into the woods only to trip over a tree root. Michael finds peace with the tree
that tripped him, and is able to talk with the tree. In turn, the tree tells
the young boy the stories of its life. This story is simple and sweet. The tree
explains that it will die and come back to life many time but the boy will only
die once. It is a simple story with a
simple message that life gives and life takes away.
The last Story, Alfred,
it is about a frog who wants a better life outside of his dull pond. However when
into his dull life a girl comes to whisk
him away, he realizes his dull life in the pond his actually where he desires
to be most of all. Out of all the
stories, I found that in this story, the author used a lot of descriptive
language,which helped bring the story to life. However, the drawings were
something I could find on my Word Program and nothing exciting to look at, even
for kids. The author mentions Wellington
boots several times throughout her stories and I found myself having to look up
what the boots are used for. I wish the
author would have referred to them as rain boots instead making it easier for a
potentially younger reader. I am aware she is a British author but to reach out
to American readers it has to have something they can reference. I only know about Wellington boots because
Kate Middleton was mentioned wearing Wellington Boots in a news article at some
point.
I gave these stories 2
out of 5 because of all the editing errors. There were too many to overlook and
several times I was unable to even finish reading the story to my children
because the writing was so poor.
Thanks go to Heidi for
this review.
Publisher: Any Subject Books (July 3, 2012)
ISBN: B008HFEP2E
Copyright: 2010
Pages: ebook - 59
Quick Review: 2 stars (out of 5)
Why I Read It:
Sent by the publisher for review.
Synopsis: The Unruly Princess & Other Stories
is an anthology of six short stories aimed at children in the 4 to 12 age
bracket with the idea being that older and more advanced children could read
unaided and younger children be read to, especially at bedtime.
All the tales have a
strong 'natural world' element and they are aimed at inspiring children to make
their own investigations and to stimulate them to want to find out more where
the stories leave off.
Author Biography: Damaris West (nee Damaris Naylor) has
been writing almost for as long as she can remember, cutting her teeth on
atmospheric poems and ferocious little stories about her own fictitious
exploits.
Although her family
home was in the heart of Cambridge, UK, hers was none-the-less a rural style of
upbringing in which natural history was of immense importance. Of her immediate
family, Damaris was the only non-scientist.
Damaris' first novel,
'Wild Goose', drew inspiration for its setting and details from her
autobiography, and reflects her own struggle to break away from the family
mould. Her third novel, 'Queen Anne's Lace', depicts the complex
interrelationships of a family (not altogether dissimilar to her own) when
their values and desires are brought into sharp relief following a change in
circumstances. Her second novel, written in time wrested from the demands of
running a tuition agency with her husband Clive, is one of fantasy.
Apart from novels,
Damaris has written poetry, short stories and articles, some of them
commercial.
She currently lives in
Umbria, Italy, in a rebuilt farmhouse with her husband and three dogs, all
Italian rescue puppies. She divides her time between writing and tending her
garden which is in constant need of protection from the ebullient native plants
and insects.
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