Twelve Dancing Princesses

by Brigette Barrager (Retold by)

Overview

Children will adore this charmingly illustrated retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ classic fairytale.

Twelve princesses, each lovelier than the flower she was named for, find themselves at the center of a baffling mystery. Each night they go to bed, locked securely in their room. But in the morning, their dancing shoes are worn thin—as though they’d been dancing all night!

A handsome suitor discovers that the princesses are enchanted, and that each night, in their sleep, they travel to a magical world to dance at a ball. Will this handsome suitor be able to break the spell and rescue the princesses?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452105802
Publisher:	Chronicle Books
Publication date:	06/24/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	3 - 8 Years

About the Author

Brigette Barrager graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in character animation. She inherited her mother's collection of fairy tale books as a child, and her love of those magical, fantastic, and dreamy worlds has never left her. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and this is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

…[Barrager's] sumptuous drawings evoke 1950s fashion illustration, with a dash of Tim Burton thrown in…
—The New York Times

Pamela Paul

"With art resembling that of animated film and several graceful dance scenes, this story could easily be set to a sound track. ...a pleasing tale for reading aloud and storytelling" - School Library Journal

"Barrager brings a fittingly soigné aesthetic to this retelling" - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

The particular challenge of redoing a well-known, oft-published fairy tale is to offer a fresh or fruitful take, and this one doesn't.

Digital illustrations vary in format from spot art to full-bleed spreads, but everything from the begowned princesses to the sparkling underground land they visit each night falls flat. The princesses are named for blossoms, each one "lovelier than the flower she was named for," but their impossibly tiny waists and huge blue eyes look like a cheap, dull version of Disney. Their dance postures barely connote motion. On the page that displays the tale's premise—that "[e]very morning, without fail, the soles of the princesses' shoes were worn out and full of holes"—Barrager shows (nine) slippers that are grubby and scuffed but lack a single hole. Matching the insipid aesthetic is a text stripped of grit. No men lose their lives trying to solve the mystery before the hero (here, Pip the cobbler) does, and there are no men in the princesses' underground boats, which "float silently" of their own accord. The boats need to float of their own accord, because these princesses have neither agency nor consciousness: They're asleep from start to finish of the dancing escapades.

In addition to this mind-numbingly bland attempt to capitalize on princess fads, a Princess Matching Game is sold separately. (Picture book/fairy tale. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews