For years, a certain king hoped for a son to inherit his crown. As each successive daughter is born, the king became angrier with his wife for her failure to produce an heir. The queen dies when Zita, the thirteenth daughter, is born. Unable to bear the child’s presence, the king sends her to live with the house servants. So, from a young age, Zita assists the cook and helps with other household chores. One day, when Zita is seven, Cook lets it slip that Zita is a princess. After this, Zita begins paying close attention to her father and her twelve sisters who knew about her birth. When the princesses discover a hidden dumbwaiter that leads from their bedroom to the kitchen’s pantry, Zita begins spending every Sunday night with her sisters in their room. After a while, Zita notices her princesses’ tattered dancing slippers. Something is making them so exhausted that, one-by-one, they begin to fall ill. One night at midnight, Zita, Breckin, the king’s stable boy and Zita’s friend, and Milek, Breckin’s soldier brother, follow the twelve sisters down the dumbwaiter into the bowels of the castle. They find an enchanted world where the princesses are forced to dance for hours. This unrelenting scene repeats itself every night. Zita steals some stationary from her father and writes letters in his name soliciting help from princes in the neighboring kingdoms. The king finds her closing the letters with the royal seal and throws them into the fire. In desperation, Zita, Breckin, and Milek turn to an old witch, who lives in an enchanted cottage in the king’s forest, for help. They discover that someone very close to the princesses is to blame for the enchantment and manage to break the spell before it is too late.
©2024 Kathy Maxwell at https://bookskidslike.com ( )

This is the third retelling of the same fairytale (the 12 dancing princesses) Ive read this year. They've gotten progressively better so maybe I should look for a fourth and see if its a 4 star read.

This book contains inacurate foraging information (morels and walnuts at the same time of year?!) ( )

After two weighty books—The Speckled Monster was long and God’s Demon dragged a bit—I was ready for something light and fluffy. How better to do that than to return to my roots with a good old-fashioned fairy tale retelling?

I’m amazed that Zahler managed to pull this off! I’ve always thought The Twelve Dancing Princesses must be a hard one to redo given the vast assortment of characters to keep track of—and yeah, the sisters didn’t all have distinct personalities, but Zahler did a remarkable job getting us to follow a few and appreciate the others. Though I can’t say I was very appreciative of the fact that the sisters’ names all started with A. Going alphabetically (maybe with twins sharing a first letter) would have been a huge help for keeping everyone straight and figuring out quickly where they fell in birth order.

Overall, it’s an enchanting book, one that would probably have been a favorite when I was in fourth or fifth grade. The idea of the one daughter being set aside as a servant surrounded by a sprawling family is actually one that I turned to relatively frequently when I was playing with dolls, animals, and Legos. (I have no idea why!) The description of the palace and surrounding land is also something I might have imagined—so maybe part of the reason I found this book so lovely is that it reminded me of my own childhood imagination. Most of the book had the same childhood innocence, the kind of detachment from reality/not totally consistent logic that is harder to get away with in even young adult books.

So with that said, the one thing that caught me up a bit was that this book had some very adult moments. It’s advertised as being for 8 to 12 year olds, but there are intimations of bastard children that ruin the lives of the mothers while the fathers get off the hook (69), “stopping at kissing” (126), and pedophilia with a side of rape (128). I’m trying to imagine an 8-year-old asking me why these two moments in the book are important, and what I would say—and it’s not easy. Neither moment is necessary, but their presence threw long shadows on my enjoyment of the rest of the book. With such adult themes, it was harder for me to make the logical allowances that I normally give for children’s books.

Yeesh, these reviews always end up being about the things I don’t like, don’t they? But seriously, all in hall, The Thirteenth Princess was absolutely charming and I would definitely recommend it to fellow lovers of fairytale retellings, particularly to those who like Gail Carson Levine and Donna Jo Napoli.

Quote Roundup

34) As an adult, I was a bit uncomfortable with how Zita’a older sisters treated her like a pet rather than a person, pressuring her into things she was uncomfortable with, like piercing her ears, so that she could be a “real” princess. This was another subtly dark theme, really, the Marie-Antoinette-ish obliviousness the sisters had for the situation of those in lower stations—stealing food from the cook even though it got the cook into trouble with the king (25) and making Zita a lavishly beautiful blanket that she will have to hid from other servants (41).

43) Props to the author for having the oldest daughter want to rule in her own right. There were some feminist issues in this book, but this at least was refreshing.

65-66) “After your father banished magic, she did not come to see me anymore. She wanted to much to please him—it was her undoing.”
Okay, feminist points for this message: don’t live only for your husband.

86) Boys were so proud—you always had to let them think they were good at things.
Aaaaaand feminist points canceled out for a comment that could have easily applied to both sexes. Deal with it, dudes

223) Zita magically recovers from years of psychological trauma.

232) I was a bit disappointed by Zita’s end-of-book transformation. I was hoping she’d be happy somewhere between royalty and peasantship.

241) I was also super disappointed that Zita, a 12-year-old girl, ended up with a love interest. Sheesh, at least give them one or two more years for puberty to set in!
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Where is all the imagination and brilliance of the Children's authors of the past? This is a bland, insipid excuse for "fun reading." The voice isn't unique, the characters don't live, and the plot is overly emotional. No wonder children are slipping behind in literacy.
Another prerequisite for the next generation of Twilighters. ( )

Diane Zahler made my childhood magical, and while I can't say this book was my favorite now, I adored her books when I was a little girl! ( )