As you may know from previous posts, my daughter is obsessed with Disney princess and while I want to support her interests, I cringe, I wince when I hear that aggravating Sleeping Beauty singing about how someday her prince'll come. Its one thing to enjoy glamour and riches and another to sit on your lovely ass waiting for a dashing dude to make life interesting. So I am on an eternal quest to find her some alternative princess stories, like Paper Bag Princess, Princess Smartypants, and Princess Knight.
This month, thanks to discerning adults who know my tastes and my daughter's obsessions, I have two new alt princess tales to add to the collection.
Ten Big Toes and A Prince's Nose
In which a cool clever princess with huge, flipper-like feet meets a prince with a gigantix schnoz and make their own happily ever after. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder meets a double whammy Cyrano. Oh, and it rhymes. Take the mantra both the prince and princess recite before bed (a bit hitting-you-over-the-head, but what the hell, its a good message):
"I am what I am and its all right with me
I don't have to be different, I just have to be
I don't want to be somebody else, no sireee
I am what I am and its all right with me."
Fanny's Dream
This one makes me cry. Love love love it. Fanny Agnes, a "sturdy" farmer girl who knows how to handle her horse manure, waits for fairy godmother on the night of the ball at the mayor's house. The fairy godmother never shows. But Heber Jensen, the short farmer boy from next door, does, and asks her to marry him. She figures why the hell not and they go on to work hard to build a home together, have three kids and laugh together by cande-light. Then, suddenly, one night the Fairy Godmother shows up. tells her there's another ball at the mayor's house with an available colonel. Is she in or out?
And then she realizes, of course, that she already found her prince who is currently reading bedtime stories to their three kids.
COULD YOU DIE??????
Now that's a message every girl should hear.
Get these books, post post haste. They have made me feel infinitely less guilt-ridden when Seconda is listening to Snow White squeaking on and on about the dashing prince of her dreams. And really, that's what parenting is all about -- guilt alleviation.
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