You Shall Be Ordinary

Many moons ago I found a book called The Ordinary Princess.  I was intrigued by the title, to begin with.  A princess who is ordinary?  What does that even mean?  So, elementary school me picked up the book and opened to the first page of the foreward.  I'll admit right here that I was an odd child.  Even in elementary school I read forwards.  I've always been a reader.  I remember in what must have been second grade--I switched schools for third--being the youngest in an advanced reading group.  We read The Secret Garden, a book a still love and will be writing about on here in a few months.  Anyway. I read the forward and M.M.  Kaye, the author, made a great point:  "... apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, [the princesses] were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair."  And it's not fair!  She says it's with that realization that this story was born.

The Ordinary Princess is the story of the seventh daughter of the King and Queen of Phantasmorania.  The couple, who already had six lovely and perfect princesses (the king and queen of Phantasmorania always have daughters; the new king will be the youngest son of the eldest princess.) and are overjoyed that they are going to be having a seventh.  A seventh daughter is very lucky.  Eventually, Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne is born to much celebration and fanfare.  As the seventh princess, it is decided to invite the fairies to her christening, although her Royal Papa is against all the fuss.  The christening seems to go off without a hitch, until near the end.  The Fairy Crustacea is caught in traffic, of all things, and is late, much to her own annoyance.  She reads the gifts from the other fairies and it seems like the little princess is going to have a magical life.  But Crustacea says to the baby that she will give her a gift that will bring her more happiness than all the others combined.  "You shall be ordinary," she declares and leaves.  With this declaration, the baby starts to scream from sheer annoyance.  She's a normal baby.

And her parents don't love the baby, who comes to be known by the perfectly normal name of Amy, any less than any of her sisters.  Her mother is a bit flustered because she can't seem to get Amy married off because she's not a perfect, golden princess.  She's gawky and her hair is dark and straight.  Her eyes can't settle on a color and she has freckles across her snub nose.  She often climbs out of her tower and goes off to play in the Forest of Faraway.  She's happy. 

Her parents get desperate to marry her off--they're considering the locked-in-a-tower, guarded-by-a-dragon route--that Amy simply decided to leave.  She wanders into the Forest of Faraway, leaving a note for her family so that they won't worry, and meets her godmother, the Fairy Crustacea.  Her dress is starting to fall apart and her shoes and stockings are worthless.  Crustacea tells Amy that she must work for money, and points her to the city of Amber, capital of Ambergeldar, where Amy gets a job as a scullery maid in the palace.  After she is there for several weeks, there is a large feast hosted so that Algernon, king of Ambergeldar, can meet a princess to marry.  Cleaning up, she meets Peregrine, a man of all work, and they become friends.  Of course, Peregrine and Amy are both keeping a large secret from the other.  What happens when the secrets come out?

I have loved this book since I read it.  I think that's because it emphasizes that ordinary is not bad.  Amy's story ends perfectly happy.  You don't have to be gorgeous or perfect for someone to like you.  Many people like you exactly how you are.  According to Schoolastic, it's set for reading levels 3-5 so it comes at a great time in a child's life to remind them that they are perfect just the way they are.  You could also read it with younger children.  It's also not very girly, so you could read it with boys and girls alike.  Despite it's original publication in 1980, this is a timeless classic that should go on every shelf.  It's even peppered with illustrations by the author herself!