A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.96 You Save: $4.03 (58%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of A Little Princess
Book Review: Definitely one to read again!
Summary: 5 Stars
I think that this is a great book for one to read when they are young. It makes you think and realize the things many of us take for granted, but it also gives us a sense of fantasy. I've re-read this book over and over and I would read it again. Definitely a tear jerker.Book Review: Every girl should read this.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is one of my personal favorites. You immediately become attached to the little princess, cry for her through her struggles and rejoice in her strength of character and determination to be more than she appears.Book Review: Excellent story for children.
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a children's classic, containing all the elements of a fairy tale. There's a villain, a good person, a magician, a princess in disguise, and a "happily ever after" ending. Except, unlike a fairy tale, it could have happened. Sara Crewe's officer father sent her to an English boarding school when she was seven. Because she was rich, the ambitious headmistress of the school, Miss Minchin, spoiled her. Then Sara's father lost all his money and died, leaving Sara a pauper in Miss Minchin's care. Miss Minchin put her to work at what was essentially slave labor, scrubbing floors and shoveling coal from dawn to dusk at no pay and very little in the way of food and other necessities of life. Sara was about to despair, when mysterious things started showing up in her room. Hot meals laid out for her in the morning and evening. Then a rug for the bare floor. Then a warm nightgown to wear, and a new blanket for the bed. She didn't know what was happening, and assumed it was magic.
It was a fine book, very good for children I think. My only problem is that Sara, like most of Frances Hodgson Burnett's characters, seemed too good to be true. She was never angry at Miss Minchin for treating her cruelly. When she found fourpence in the street, she bought food and gave almost all of it to a beggar girl even though she herself was starving. And so on. But other than that it was great.
Book Review: From "Ermengarde"
Summary: 5 Stars
I've always liked the story of Sara Crewe and her life as a little princess, but I love this book for even a better reason: I took part in a musical version of this play! I played Ermengarde, for those of you who have read the book, and I loved it! It was most fun because I felt like a part of the story every time. Well, enough of that, but all I can say is I love this book! Even for those of you who aren't into the classic literature thing, I think you will love this. The characters are very detailed, and you love to hate Miss Minchin! (hee, hee!)Book Review: Get the Tasha Tudor edition - hardback if you can - by all means!
Summary: 5 Stars
I didn't discover "A Little Princess" until I was a teenager, mostly because my earlier attempt to read "The Secret Garden" by the same author had not gone well. With "The Secret Garden", even Tasha Tudor's beautiful illustrations could not salvage the fact that there wasn't much of a story going on once you got past the initial excitement of the heroine's parents dying suddenly in an epidemic in India and she being shipped off to the foreign country of England. Thankfully, "A Little Princess" does NOT have any problems of lacking in plot. It is, essentially, a Cinderella fairy tale with a realistic setting, that of late Victorian England. It has a heroine (the "Little Princess" herself), villains (Miss Minchin, the evil proprietress of the boarding school, and Lavinia, a girl at the school who is less than nice), companions to help the heroine fight the villains (Sara's friends Becky, Ermengarde and Lottie) and finally a knight in shining armor (the man next door and his valet) who rescue the Little Princess from her impoverished attic cell, to much rejoicing.
Sara, a wealthy little girl who also has good manners, is kind and empathetic to others less fortunate than herself, and generally doesn't put on airs. Her widower father puts her in a boarding school run by Miss Minchin, who behaves very kindly towards Sara at first. But when her father dies after having lost all of Sara's fortune in an ill-advised investment, leaving Sara a pauper, Miss Minchin's true evil nature emerges as she starves Sara and forces her to wear rags and perform household drudgery to pay for her keep. Little does she know that a friend of Sara's father is searching the world to find her...
One might say that you can pretty much see where this story is heading from the get-go, and that no little child could be as perfect as Sara. Actually, she isn't that perfect; she does lose her temper a few times or feel rather unkindly towards others, but she manages to stifle it most of the time. And anyway, this is a fairy tale, with Sara as princess. The lesson of how some people will behave nicely to others only in proportion to the material gains that they think they can get, while others will behave nicely to everyone, all the time, is nicely put across - not as heavy-handed and morality-driven as it could have been. I wouldn't recommend the book for very young readers as they're unlikely to understand all the details of Victoriana within, but anyone from about age 9 and up who likes a good story should enjoy Sara's story.
I wouldn't dream of reading this book without Tasha Tudor's marvelous and detailed illustrations. Indeed, I can't imagine any other illustrations accompanying this book any more than I can picture Peter Rabbit not drawn by Beatrix Potter. If you can get the book in hardback with its lovely dust jacket showing the schoolgirls out for a walk in Sara's neighborhood (not the same picture shown on the paperback edition), so much the better.