The Princess and the Pea

Product Information

This book is a faithful retelling of HCA's tale, but set in East Africa. The illustrations are wonderful; faithful to national dress and language; celebrating authentic hair styles and different body shapes and skin tones. Summary: A prince is looking for a princess to become his other half, but he is becoming quite doubtful in his search when he does not find a princess to fit his liking. Until one day when a distraught princess shows up at the king’s door, disheveled, but a princess none the less. Now the pressure is on the King to discover if she is truly a princess.

They were still worrying about it when, one night, there was a terrible storm and through the noise of the howling wind and the rain they heard a gentle tapping on the door. Although this book is a very brief take on the classic fairytale, I feel it still provides a lot of opportunity for classroom activities.

Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom. Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. The prince was overjoyed. His grooms and his knights and his squires and his cooks and his horses who had had to search all over the land for a real princess with him were overjoyed – at last they could have a rest. The Prince accordingly made her his wife; being now convinced that he had found a real Princess. The three peas were however put into the cabinet of curiosities, where they are still to be seen, provided they are not lost. One of Hans Christian Andersen's briefest tales, The Princess and the Pea was originally published in 1835, in his first collection of fairy-tales, Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. Første Samling. Første Hefte. ("Tales, Told for Children. First Collection. First Booklet"). The story of a prince who wants to marry a "real" princess, and a princess so sensitive that twenty mattresses cannot soften the bruising impact of a small pea, it was described by Andersen as a traditional tale heard in his own youth. Andersen, Hans Christian (2000) [1871], The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography, Cooper Square Press, ISBN 0-8154-1105-7

The Princess and the Pea is a famous story from 1835, by Hans Christian Andersen, which has been adapted and retold numerous times. The original is quite short, and clearly satirical and tongue in cheek. Really it is a one-idea story, in which an obviously ridiculous situation is contrived, to test whether a princess is truly a princess. Charles Boner was the first to translate The Princess and the Pea into English, as "The Princess on the Peas" in "A Danish Story-Book" in 1846. Victoria grew up traveling the world as an Air Force brat. Today, she lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband and her dogs. Victoria had two bearded collies, Sam and Louie (named from characters in one of her books). Sam (on the left), the best dog in the world for 13 ½ years, passed away in September 2010. Louie took on the position of loyal companion and did a fine job even though he doesn't understand that kitchen counter surfing is not allowed! In the morning, the princess tells her hosts that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed that she is certain has bruised her. The prince's family realizes that she is a princess after all, since no one but a real princess could be so delicate. The two are happily married, and the story ends with the pea being placed in a museum, where it might still remain. I think my favorite part was the innuendo & sarcasm but then, Victoria Alexander is known for that. Text size: A- A A+ http://www.shortkidstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Edited-The-Princess-and-ThePea-opt.mp3The Princess and the Pea was the very first play I ever saw. (This momentous event happened soon after my parents attended the play The Sound of Music with Mary Martin and didn’t take me, a five year old, because the play was about Nazis. They got there and saw a bunch of little kids my age in the audience. Out of guilt I suppose, they bought me the record album. The kids on the record album cover looked as though they were having so much fun that I begged incessantly to attend the play but I was always refused. But that’s another story.) Anyway, since then, I’ve always been particularly fond of Hans Christian Anderson’s story of The Princess and the Pea, and I’ve just noticed that there are many books based on this story. I now want to read a bunch of them. While a 1905 article in the American Journal of Education recommended the story for children aged 8–10, [4] "The Princess and the Pea" was not uniformly well received by critics. Toksvig wrote in 1934, "[the story] seems to the reviewer not only indelicate but indefensible, in so far as the child might absorb the false idea that great ladies must always be so terribly thin-skinned." [5] Characters acting completely differently that they have acted the entire book. The entire book Jared has single-mindedly loved Cece and pursued her devotedly, then a minor nefarious character accuses her of bribing him to allow Jared to win a race and he Jared walks away from her saying "love has nothing to do with it"? OH COME ON!!! There was once a Prince who wished to marry a Princess; but then she must be a real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hopes of finding such a lady; but there was always something wrong.