Hamster Princess - Harriet the Invincible is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but with a modernist take that's quite charming. It's nominally for Grades 3-7, but Bowen could read entire chapters out loud with only a handful of words that I had to correct him on, so the take the grade level thing with a huge sack of salt.
I've been reading a chapter every night to him: it's fun reading (and obviously not as daunting as The Two Towers, which is the bonus reading he gets every night as well). The protagonist is obviously not the demure princesses of old, but the feisty, cliff-diving, sword wielding modern princess. There's even math in the form of fractions, and the wall of text is frequently interrupted with cartoons or comic book panels, which is great. The writing is not as amazingly fun as Thieves and Kings, but I've lost all hope that Mark Oakley will ever get around to completing that story.
My only complaint is that the men in the book are all whiners. Since little kids whine all the time, I would very much like my boys not to have whiner role models. It's OK for the princes to not be the heroes or protagonists, but there's no need to have all the males be whiners.
Recommended. I'll see if Bowen wants more Hamster Princess books tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
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