Princess Academy
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4.2 • 37 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A Newbery Honor Winner
A New York Times Bestseller
In this first book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's Princess Academy series, Miri finds herself a sudden participant in a contest to find the next princess of the realm.
Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince will choose his bride from among the village girls.
The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess. Soon Miri finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires. Winning the contest could give her everything she ever wanted--but it would mean leaving her home and family behind.
Don't miss any of these other books from New York Times bestselling author Shannon Hale:
The Princess Academy trilogy
Princess Academy
Princess Academy: Palace of Stone
Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters
The Books of Bayern
The Goose Girl
Enna Burning
River Secrets
Forest Born
Book of a Thousand Days
Dangerous
Graphic Novels
with Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Rapunzel's Revenge
Calamity Jack
For Adults
Austenland
Midnight in Austenland
The Actor and the Housewife
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers enchanted by Hale's Goose Girl are in for an experience that's a bit more earthbound in this latest fantasy-cum-tribute to girl-power. Cheerful and witty 14-year-old Miri loves her life on Mount Eskel, home to the quarries filled with the most precious linder stone in the land, though she longs to be big and strong enough to do quarry work like her sister and father. But Miri experiences big changes when the king announces that the prince will choose a potential wife from among the village's eligible girls and that said girls must attend a new Princess Academy in preparation. Princess training is not all it's cracked up to be for spunky Miri in the isolated school overseen by cruel Tutor Olana. But through education and the realization that she has the common mountain power to communicate wordlessly via magical "quarry-speech" Miri and the girls eventually gain confidence and knowledge that helps transform their village. Unfortunately, Hale's lighthearted premise and underlying romantic plot bog down in overlong passages about commerce and class, a surprise hostage situation and the specifics of "quarry-speech." The prince's final princess selection hastily and patly wraps things up. Ages 9-up.
