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SOPHIE THE CIRCUS PRINCESS by Stig Claesson

SOPHIE THE CIRCUS PRINCESS

by Stig Claesson & translated by Susanna Stevens & illustrated by Friso Henstra

Pub Date: May 1st, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-87008-4
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

A stunt rider of horses in a circus, Sophie is wooed and won by a flashy gent posing as the prince of Pomerania. After a brief interlude of happiness, her love is arrested for impersonation and condemned to hard labor in a stone quarry. Sophie returns to her native land, ``at the end of the world where the sun goes down,'' where she buys a house, a cow, and a clutch of hens. Years later, the ersatz princeling reappears. Sophie gives a command performance atop her cow—balancing, dancing, but no flips as she has grown too old for that. They live happily ever after. Understatement is Claesson's key to success. The prince might be a rascal, but he is true to his love; Sophie's not embittered, but has an angle on her fate and knows what's to come. The only downside is the narrator's presence, which seems superfluous and provides a pat finish, rushed and incidental to the story line. Henstra's watercolors give the characters a genuine warmth, or, in the case of the Gestapo-types who come to arrest the prince, a suitable sinisterness. (Picture book. 3-7)