“Princess Academy” is an unusual story of integrity, personal growth, and a group of girls who want to be the Queen someday. Miri lives on a mountain known for its rich resource of linder, a beautiful stone used in palaces and noblemen’s homes. Only those who live on the mountain know how to quarry it and bring it out in one piece. Miri’s father is an expert rock cutter, and she wants to join him in the quarry and learn the trade, but she is absolutely forbidden, even though her sister goes with him every day.
The announcement is made that the seers in the region have proclaimed their mountain home to be the place where the new princess will be found, and a princess academy is established on the mountain. A woman named Olana will come to school them in everything from reading to history, etiquette to dancing, and at the end of the year, the prince will come and choose his bride from amongst the girls in the school. Miri is sent to be educated, wondering all the time what it would be like to be a princess. She has never known what it’s like to have wealth; her family exists hand-to-mouth, but the idea of all she would be able to give her family is incentive enough for her to work hard at her studies. It’s a hard task – the other girls don’t accept her as one of their own, and she only has one true friend out of the whole bunch.
But when a group of ruffians from the forest come and take over the academy, holding the girls hostage, it’s not her princess training that saves the day, but rather her common sense and her knowledge of the mountain. Being a princess is a wonderful thing, but being a smart girl is even better.
(This book was published in 2005 by Bloomsbury.)
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