I had purchased Princess Academy at a school fund-raising book sale—on of those Scholastic things that have good prices, make money for the school, and get kids excited about books—the bastards—back in the autumn sometime, and never got around to reading it. The spring version of the book sale came around, and I managed not to purchase another copy, somehow. I was, however, reminded that I hadn’t read it, and so the next time I was looking for a nice easy paperback, I picked it up.
It’s terrific. I hadn’t remembered that it was by Something Hale, who wrote Goose Girl, which I also liked a lot. I imagine that’s why I bought the thing in the first place. Unless it was my Best Reader’s choice, which is fairly likely, now that I think about it. The book is very much a Girls’ Book, in a way that probably screams to boys Do Not Read This! It’s for Girls! Which is too bad, because it’s so good, and although I think it really is a book for girls in deeper and better ways than just having a girl as its protagonist, I think there’s a good deal for boys to enjoy here, too.
I should probably ruminate about what makes it a Girls’ Book. I’m not sure I can say it clearly. I mean, sure, it’s about a girl, and it’s about a Princess Academy, so it taps into that whole Princess thing, with the fine silken dresses and all that. Our heroine also has to deal with a social system that, although not overwhelmingly sexist, is still patriarchal, and somewhat limiting for girls. For boys, too, of course, which is part of the whole patriarchy thing. Also, a subplot at the Princess Academy involves the whole mean-girls thing, although it isn’t really a focus of the book. There’s also a romantic subplot, which of course is told from the girl’s point of view. All of those seem like Girls’ Book things.
On the other hand, there are bandits! And the two major things that our heroine does to Win are (a) get a basic grasp of the economy of the kingdom, and bring that knowledge to bear on the situation in her home village, and (2) figure out the principles of a specific kind of telepathy that is connected to the peculiar rock mined by the villagers (and the rock dust the villagers breathe) and bring that knowledge to bear on the situation at the Academy. There is nothing peculiarly Girly about those things. A book where the Boy Hero does those things wouldn’t seem terribly odd. Nor, I suppose, would a book where the Boy Hero attends Prince Academy, that taps into the fine uniforms of royalty, that deals with the limiting society of a mountain village, and that has both a romance and a struggle with cliques at school.
Which is my point, I guess. While this book is clearly a Girls’ Book, it’s a Girls’ Book in a way that I think shouldn’t scream Not for Boys the way it does. And yet, it does. There it is. When the Youngest Member gets to the appropriate reading level, I’ll have to make sure to advise him not to neglect the Girls’ Books.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.