Siblings Mark and Susan Drayton meet a mysterious girl named Serafina Benonia in Central Park one day, and the three quickly become friends while exchanging ideas about their favorite places to visit (they all love art museums!). When Fina tells her new American friends that she is actually a princess, the daughter of the deposed king of Carinna - a small independent state located within the larger territory of Italy - Mark believes her, but Susan is skeptical. Events prove Fina's story to be true however, and the Drayton children become involved in helping their new friend to escape a political plot to establish a royal regency and restore her as Carinna's monarch. For Fina, who has come to love her new home and nation, wants nothing more than to be a normal American girl...

Written in the late 1960s, and intended for the American market, this brief novella from British children's author Mabel Esther Allan was never published at that time, due to what the introduction describes as changing tastes in the world of children's literature, and a move away from 'light fiction.' It lay in the author's files for many years, until it was eventually printed by The Bemrose Press in 1990. A sweet little Ruritanian tale, it offers a slight variation on the usual theme of the deposed monarch who is struggling to restore his or her rightful position - think books like Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Lost Prince - in that Serafina is decidedly opposed to becoming a queen, and wants to remain an ordinary citizen of the United States. Allan explored this theme in her short story Queen Rita at the High School as well - originally sold as a magazine story in 1945, it was included in the 1991 collection, Queen Rita at the High School and Other School Stories, also published by Bemrose Press - and the general preference for ordinary, rather than royal life that these stories reveal, seems in line with the more progressive ideals the author often espoused through her children's fiction. This is a very brief tale, and exceedingly difficult to track down - I read a copy in the rare book room of an academic library - so I don't know that I would strongly recommend it to other readers, unless they are very devoted Mabel Esther Allan fans, or have a particular interest in the Ruritanian Romance. ( )