My children’s book that I am working on publishing, The Clumsy Princess, is really a story
about my friend’s little girl, who we’ll call “L.” L is a sweet, stubborn, adorably
fierce and fearless 2 year old. After L spent another afternoon in the Emergency
Room, this time for taking a header off of an older sibling’s top bunk (nothing
had to be casted that day, thankfully!), I referred to her as an “accident-prone
princess.”
The face of fearlessness!
I thought about how Disney princesses appear so perfect:
graceful, beautiful, well-dressed, and well-spoken. Their whole goal in life is to find their true love and live happily (and richly) ever after.
What if, instead of
presenting our girls with an impossible standard to achieve, we created
princesses who were more like real people? What if we stopped subtly telling them that their goal should be to find a man to "rescue" them, but instead encouraged them to celebrate their differences and embrace life?
What if there were stories about
clumsy princesses, and shy princesses, and bossy princesses, and tomboy
princesses?
Those are the kind of princesses I want my daughters (should I have
any) to enjoy; princesses who are flawed, and wonderful because of it. The idea
for a book series was born!
Please share! I want to know, where do you get your inspiration?
Wonderful Amy! Yes, human, imperfect, amazing Princesses!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this idea of all kinds of princesses!! Yes, yes, yes!! Back in the day, I would have fit into the feisty "Tomboy" category! Love it!! Rhonda Paglia "Grammy Pags Stories"
ReplyDeleteI would have been a tomboy princess too! With scraped knees and dirty fingernails and a snake I caught, I was the very essence of tomboy... We need to tell more girls that its ok to prefer climbing tree to tea parties (or not, if tea parties is what they prefer!).
ReplyDelete