Customer Reviews

Disney's Princess Storybook Collection: Love and Friendship Stories

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a perfect gift book for that five or six year girl on your list, as long as you don't mind that she grows up thinking that the girl with the daintiest feet wins the prince's love (Cinderella) and that a kiss from a prince has magical life-restoring powers (Sleeping Beauty -- or is it Snow White?) This is not girl-empowering feminist literature, but if you're looking to please the girl (rather than her liberated mother), this is a good bet. The stories are short enough for bedtime reading to a toddler, and the pictures are plentiful, so a two or three year old could amuse herself by looking at the pictures. I would guess that the actual reading level is about second grade, and there are some words that would be challenging for a beginning reader. The book is beautifully done, with thick, glossy pages, plentiful illustrations, a girl-friendly pink cover and a nice silver edging. It is a book that should last for years. The stories are -- well -- classic Disney princess stories, with some of the more contemporary stories (Mulan, Poccahantas, Little Mermaid) as well as the standard fare. I actually enjoyed reading some of the stories aloud to a very young girl -- it was a short course refresher on Disney princess tales -- and a five year old girl to whom I gave this book drags it everywhere with her. I don't think you'd go wrong giving this to a young girl.

Judging from the cover, I assumed the book was a collection of ONLY THE CLASSIC DISNEY PRINCESS STORIES; however, it has all the stories listed below:

CINDERELLA, SLEEPING BEAUTY, THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, ALADDIN, POCAHONTAS, MULAN, DUMBO, THE FOX AND THE HOUND, A BUG'S LIFE, LADY AND THE TRAMP, THE RESCUERS, BAMBI, THE LION KING, LION KING II: SIMBA'S PRIDE, OLIVER AND COMPANY, ROBIN HOOD AND TARZAN. (I didn't list them in the sequence of the book did.)

The editing of the stories almost makes them "new" (different from the movie, but not too much) and the illustrations are wonderful (however, I wish they were a bit larger.) My favorite thing about this book is the lovely ROMANTIC cover and the gorgeous SILVER edges--plus the fact that it's full of wonderful Disney love and friendship stories sure to please everyone!

An inviting, textbook-sized treasury for any young disney fan, especially little "princesses." My 3-year-old is thrilled by the color pictures and the inclusion of most of her favorite characters. The short, composite-style stories make it enjoyable for kid-sized attention spans and perfect for quiet time. We keep it handy (even in our pool bag) to enjoy when taking a break from busy summer play. We've seen two others in the series including "Animal Stories" and "Storybook Classics" that look equally appealing and we surely will add those to our collection.

The pictures in this book are great, especially for small children to look at while you read the story. But, read ALL of the other reviews. It's not coincidence that many are complaining of the quality of the stories. They're not TERRIBLE, but they're written too advanced for small children, and the stories are too short for older children. The stories are super-condensed (four or five page) versions of the movies, so if you haven't seen the movies, they're pretty hard to follow. We let our daughter look at the pictures while we tell our own versions of the stories because the written words are too hard for her to follow. Aside from that, the actual BOOK is terribly made. The binding on ours came completely off and it lost several pages within a week of very light use.

I was dissapointed with this volume. The pictures are nice, but I thought the stories were edited poorly, making it difficult for young children to understand the story if they were unfamiliar with it without a lot of explanation. Also, the book uses a lot of large words for young children. And, even though I realize many of these are "love" stories, they still came across as a little heavy-handed on the romance for my taste.

This bizarre book will not make sense to your children unless they have memorized every Disney animated film every made. The stories start randomly in the middle and have no narrative flow. Many are oddly disturbing in tone and content. We received this book as a gift, started to read it to our girls and were frankly horrified. I think the most telling thing is the earlier reviewer who said that she loved the book because it was the same size as other Disney books and looked great on her shelf! That is clearly its best use...leave it on the shelf.

This book is a total waste of money. There are typographical errors, if you can imagine. The stories have no cohesion. If you don't already know the videos, you can't follow the stories at all. I bought this so that my daughter (3) can know what her friends are talking about who all watch the videos. The stories jump about here and there and change the original story line anyway so they just don't make any sense to her. Or to me, for that matter, and I have seen the videos. There are better books out there for your money.

These stories have been so poorly edited and abridged that many of them are very difficult to follow. This is a transparent effort on the part of Disney to simply sell more of their junk. It's shameful the way they treat narrative and a real disservice to the kids who are seduced by the pictures and want to read this book.

My uncle brought this book to me and my sister from America, and we were so happy to read this.
The stories in it were very easy to understand, it fits for my sister, a middle school student who didn't love English very much, I was glad that she was interested in this! And pictures in it were beautiful. The most important thing is this book introduced many good Disney movies and stories to me. Before I finished reading this book, I haven't know how romantic the movie "Beauty and the Beast" was. And if it wasn't for this book, I wouldn't watch the movie "Oliver&Company", then I would never know how wonderful the song in this movie were! If I haven't read this book, I wouldn't know the movie "Tarzan", and I wouldn't know Phil Collins and his glorious music! Even I can say that without having read this book, I wouldn't love Disney so much!
When I read some stories I've know, I felt a little disappointed. The stories were too simple and short, every story owned only 7 or 8 pages.
However, I'm still grateful to this book for introducing so many good movies and stories to me!

This is a collection of what should be wonderful, classic children's stories. Unfortunately, these versions are SO abbreviated that they make very little sense, and lack all that Disney magic. Do yourself--and your child--a favor, and buy each story as an individual book. These "collections" pack in a lot of titles, but the wonderful details and true story lines of the individual tales are sadly absent. A huge disappointment.