Title: The Princess and the Pony
Author: Kate Beaton
Main character: Princess Pinecone
Rating: Avoid
Mo (Rating: Avoid)
The premise of this book is there’s this princess who is a “warrior”. But no one treats her like one. She wants to go into battle and do warrior-like things, but all she gets for her birthday are cute sweaters. She asks for a horse for her birthday, but all she gets is a cute pony.
Time comes for battle, and she uses her cute pony to her advantage to make all the other warriors go all “awww” and she wins the most valuable warrior award.
What the book was trying to say was unclear to me. Perhaps the message was for girls to be comfortable in their own skin? But this book felt off for two reasons: First, it glorified this whole masculine warrior/beat each other up thing. And second, the message I took back from this book was that if a girl has to compete in a boy’s world, she’ll do best by relying on her feminine charms. Neither is a message I want to give to my children.
Avoid this book.