Outlaw Princess Of Sherwood: A Tale Of Rowan Hood [Turtleback]

Nancy Springer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 2005

It has been little more than a year since Etty-once Princess Ettarde, promised to the power-hungry Lord Basil-escaped from her father and joined Rowan Hood's band of misfit teens and outlaws-in-the-making. Etty is so happy, she cannot imagine returning to her old life. That is, until her father appears to reclaim her. King Solon is determined to bring Etty back to barter her hand for peace. He will do anything. Even use his wife, Ettarde's mother, as bait. In a cage. In Sherwood Forest. In winter. Etty will not stand for it. Neither will Rowan Hood. An intergenerational battle of wit, will power, and wisdom follows in this third tale of Rowan Hood.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-7-It has been nearly a year since Princess Ettarde escaped from a fancy carriage to the cover of Sherwood Forest to avoid an arranged marriage. She has been happy living as Etty, one of the band of Rowan Hood, until her father and his troops arrive and place her thinly clad mother in a gilded cage to lure Etty back to her regal life. The teen dearly loves her mother, and resists the urge to flee. With her friends in the Rowan band as well as the help of Robin Hood and some of his men, she works through a clever plan to resolve this crisis. King Solon has given his daughter a good education in Greek philosophy, which she puts to use in confronting him, and applies her skills as a logician in many situations in the story. There is conflict and action from cover to cover as characters ply their varied skills to achieve goals and live life on their own terms, in a beautifully depicted forest setting. Fans of the series will enjoy this third installment; while new readers may be puzzled by references to past events, and will not fully understand the characters, they should still find the story satisfying.
Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. In this third installment of Springer's Tales of Rowan Hood, a series that imagines the merry men sharing Sherwood Forest with an offshoot band led by Robin Hood's daughter, the past of another of Rowan's outlaws rears its ugly head. The runaway princess Ettarde finds herself baited into a renewed battle of wills with her father, King Solon, who has placed a cage deep in the woods and locked the queen inside. Knowing he means to lure her to her mother's aid, then push her into a dreaded marriage, Etty concocts a plot that forces her father to deal with her on her own terms. Backstory is gracefully interwoven, but there's enough continuity with the previous books to satisfy old hands (Lionel still incenses Etty by calling her "dear lady"), even as Springer introduces another gender-bending subplot. The ending brings Etty back to the threshold of courtly life, but tantalizing loose ends suggest that future visits with Springer's eccentric, appealing outlaws may be imminent. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Turtleback: 122 pages
• Publisher: Demco Media (April 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0606331239
• ISBN-13: 978-0606331234
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

More About the Author

"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.

My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.

Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.

Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.

Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.

"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.

"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.

Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.

By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.

It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.

It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.

Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice little book, September 29, 2006

By 

Julia Walter (Cobleskill, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (Rowan Hood) (Hardcover)

Book # 1 of this series is Rowan Hood, about Rowan and her ancillary band to Robin's in the Sherwood Forest. Book # 2 is Lionclaw. Book # 3 is this one about Princess Ettard, a 13 year old who is rescued by Rowan and friends from a marraige to a wealthy landowner. In this, there is more backstory to Etty, we find out more about her parents and why her father is the tyrant king he is. I haven't read Lionclaw, the book about Lionel, yet, but I don't *think* this novel would stand well on its own.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Outlaw Princess Of Sherwood, March 20, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Outlaw Princess of Sherwood: A Tale of Rowan Hood (Paperback)

The Outlaw Princess Of Sherwood was a great book. There were some parts that were awesome. It really reeled the reader in, but some parts were kind of boring.I would give it a 3 on a scale of 1-5. If you like adventurous books or if you like books with a lot of action, then this is the book for you. It was exciting and fun to read. I didn't know what was going to happen next.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Twist on Robin Hood, January 5, 2005

By 

Kristy Howard "Student" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (Rowan Hood) (Hardcover)

Rowan Hood, the daughter of legendary outlaw Robin Hood lives in Sherwood Forest just like her father. Just like her father, she cannot stand when a big rich king bullies someone poor. In this case, it is her new friend, Princess Etty. A pretty good book by Nancy Springer, Outlaw Princess showed good promise for a new twist on Robin Hood.