Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE THIRTEENTH PRINCESS by Diane Zahler

THE THIRTEENTH PRINCESS

by Diane Zahler

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-182498-2
Publisher: HarperCollins

This sweetly written reimagining of “The 12 Dancing Princesses” is for younger readers than the richer and darker Princess of the Midnight Ball, by Jessica Day George (2009). Narrator Zita is the 13th princess of the title, although she lives and works with the servants. Her 12 sisters all have names that begin with A, as did their mother, but her father named her and banished her when her mother died at Zita’s birth. Stealthily she sneaks into her sisters’ lives in ways her father has forbidden, and they love her, but they are falling prey to exhaustion and illness. A clever stableboy, his soldier brother, a wise woman in the woods and Cook help Zita to unravel the enchantment that holds her sisters. Delicious descriptions of gowns and (worn-out) slippers, teas and sweetmeats, pink castle and dark forest make up for the pale villains, incomplete magic and the occasional obviousness of the story’s fairy-tale skeleton. (Fairy tale/fantasy. 8-12)