Customer Reviews

Princess Pigsty

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fantastic piece of modern fantasy which chronicles the relationship between a young, non-conformist princess and her family. In the story, little Isabella decides good manners, pretty dresses, and being clean are all quite boring. He father (the king) decides to discipline her by sending her first to the kitchen to cook then to the pigsty to work...and Isabella loves her new duties at the castle! Her father finally accepts that Isabella desires a different way of life.

This book holds a special place in my heart because I have a non-conformist, 5-year-old Isabella in my home as well. The story is one of love and acceptance within a healthy family. The parents want only the best for little Isabella...and I can certainly relate to that...but eventually decide that she has her own goals and they must honor her desires to a point. A real-life lesson rolled into a fun fairytale package.

In the classroom, I would read this book alongside other tales involving royalty and castles then compare the tone and style of this book with the others. What elements are the same? How are they different? Children might also rewrite the story starring themselves as the main character. How would they have behaved differently? Another extension might be to place Princess Isabella in a modern day setting. How would the story change?

Our almost 4 year old daughter has become obsessed with princesses over the course of the past year; unfortunately, everywhere we go, we are inundated with the soul-sucking Disney princesses. Needless to say, she wants every Disney princess book she sees, but I just cannot bring myself to spend money on products based on princesses who teach girls to aspire to be made-up, manicured, skinny zombies with no real personalities.
Thankfully, Cornelia Funke has written this book as well as The Princess Knight. They both teach kids that princesses can be cool, independent girls who refuse to live their lives on anyone else's terms but their own.
Funke's princesses are wonderful antidotes to the cloying, awful Disney princesses, and I cannot recommend this book enough.

Funny story about a little princess who stands her ground to be herself.
My granddaughter loved it!

This is a really cute book. It is intended to be dramatic and humurous and should be read that way because it is fun. The yelling of the king should be taken with humor becasue no one ever disagrees with him and it is supposed to be funny. The little princess fights for what she wants and there is only one page that mentioins kicking but it is ultimately to defend herself from people trying to physically force her to do something she doesn't want to. If your family really has a problem with this, then just add a personal comment about how that is not a nice way to solve your problems. Ultimately, the book is about a little girl who is different from her family and while her family is angry at first, they ultimately accept her for who she is.

The recalcitrat princess is the last of three girls and she's tired of the royal life and its rules (wearing a crown all day gives her a headaches). Princess Pigsty is a cute, captivating read with the princess and her father battling over how a princess should behave and Ms Pigsty not heeding (and very rudely at that) a word of his advice. In the end, the King caves and gives the priness her way. Not a brilliant message, though engagingly told throughout the book and will hold a young girls attention. My daughter actually asked me in the middle of the story "Mummy, why is she so bad?"

Instead perhaps the princess could have learned to merge her love for pigs, helping in the kitchen and basically being an independent thinker with her duties as a little member of the royal family. The lesson could have been that you can let your own light shine, but responsibility and corformity are still very important for young children.

We both love "The Princess Knight", so I thought this one would be great too. I love that the princess wants to climb trees, and pick her own nose, and tend to the pigs and sleep in the pigsty. Instead of standing around with her hair curled looking pretty all day. But the princess bites and kicks and scratches the men trying to pull her out from under the bed. The King (her father) is continually screaming in "rage", tearing his crown and wig from his head, etc. Some of the pictures of him look pretty terrifying to me. In the end he does get the crown from the fishpond for her, and says he misses her and wants her to come back to the house. But this doesn't make up for the horrendous behavior on both of their parts before hand, in my opinion. Every family has their own dynamics, but ours is not a screaming and yelling family. And yet, as I said, my daughter does love it anyway, and wants to read it most nights. "The Princess Knight" princess is strong, independent, and defiant too, but the only time her and her dad argue is when she's 16 and it's a much calmer argument in comparison to the ones throughout this book.