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The Princess's Blankets    by Carol Ann Duffy & Catherine Hyde Amazon.com order for
Princess's Blankets
by Carol Ann Duffy
Order:  USA  Can
Templar, 2009 (2009)
Hardcover
* *   Reviewed by Bob Walch

My story begins with a simple statement - 'A princess lived once, who was always cold. Even when the bright sun was its hottest, she never felt warm.'

I am that princess and try as I might, I never could get warm. So I just stayed bundled up in my bedchamber. My father, the king, was so worried that he promised to give anyone whatever he or she asked if they person could improve my situation and banish the cold.

Well, I thought, this should certainly be interesting! A lot of the kingdom's inhabitants suggested all sorts of things - thermal underwear, sleeping gloves, copper warming pans - but nothing worked. I continued to shiver in my bed.

Then one day a stranger arrived and told my father he could banish the cold and warm me up. When he accomplished this feat, the man would then take me to be his wife. Since he had cold, cruel eyes, I wasn't too thrilled by this course of events so I decided I wouldn't cooperate with this sinister fellow.

Calling upon the special magic he possessed, the stranger provided me with four blankets made of elements of the ocean, forest, mountains, and earth itself. Nothing worked. I was even colder than I was before! Having depleted my father's realm of many of its natural resources, the stranger left.

At this point I was resigned to remaining in the deep freeze for the rest of my royal life, but then something unexpected happened. A simple musician visited our home. The kind young man played his flute for me and when he kissed my hand something quite miraculous happened. I'll let you read my story to find out what occurred, but I'll let you in on a little secret - we did end up living happily ever after!

Since the illustrations that accompany my story are rather artistic in nature and not what you usually expect to find in a book like this, I think older children eight or nine years of age might enjoy this tale more than younger readers.

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