Thursday 16 July 2015

Young fiction to read aloud featuring Princess DisGrace by Lou Kuenzler

We've been reading young fiction with Rosie for a while now. She really enjoyed reading The BFG by Roald Dahl with her dad a while ago and they're now onto James and the Giant Peach.

In school her class has been reading The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton so we decided to carry it on and read the next book The Faraway Tree. That was fun, although I got slightly bored by it!

And then from the school library Rosie has been bringing home some Rainbow Magic books (slight groan) and the Darcey Bussell ballet stories which are actually very good!

When we were offered the chance to read Princess DisGrace Third Term at Tall Towers I decided it might work quite well and we started to read it together. I'm so pleased we did! It's been a total pleasure to read and is a great adventure story with a good message of an unprincessy fun, spirited girl. In fact we enjoyed it so much we sought out the other ones in the series.

Princess Grace attends a boarding school for young princesses on an island. Her horrid cousin, Precious, also attends and she has two best friends, Scarlett and Izumi. It combines the boarding school life with fantasy so the princesses ride unicorns and lean to swim with mermaids. The plots are great, full of twists and turns and easy enough for my five (nearly six - eek) year old to follow. In fact I've been enjoying them so much I occasionally read ahead when we've finished the chapter for the night, I just need to know what happens next!

The illustrations by Kimberley Scott have been a big hit as well. Rosie always stops at them and stares at them attentively. 

Thank you to Scholastic Books for our review copy of the Third Term. We've managed to get the first book and now just need to find the second in the series!