The Birthday Ball

Bored, bored, bored. It’s all Princess Patricia Priscilla can think as her sixteenth birthday approaches. It’s less than a week before the Birthday Ball, where she will choose her husband from a group of unappealing suitors.

Boring.

But things around the kingdom get pretty interesting when Princess Patricia Priscilla disguises herself as a peasant and starts attending the village school. She may not be spending her days in the comfort of the castle, clothed in silk, but at least life in the village is fun. It doesn’t hurt that the new schoolmaster is young and handsome.

In this tale of mistaken identity, creamed pigeons, and young love, the two-time Newbery Medal winner Lois Lowry compares princesses to peasants and finds them to be exactly the same in all the important ways.

Entertaining if you can handle a little boredom

I had a lot of fun reading this book. The idea that a princess could try and pose as a commoner is not new, but the way this story did it was something I never thought this story was going to be about in the first place. and then the way it all ended where everyone gets a happy ending. well of course it gets a happy ending its a fairy tale after all, was just a wonderful little surprise too. a few bumps along the way you dont see coming, but the stiory keeps going. I will say thiugh that at first i was bored when it seemd the stiry was going to be all about the spoiled rotten rich princess being bored and yet she is having a ball all for her. how much more spoiled rotten and undeserving can one princess be? it just made me really hate her being the main character and all. but actually i dont want to ruin things, but she is actually a really sweet hearted princess with a good heart and just wants everyone to have everything they deserve even if they have no way of getting those things themselves. it isnt their fault the way they were born into the lives theyve been thrown into and such. she wants to change things for the better and dare i say she does and she does it in ehr own way. i will warn the reader though that it is really difficult to read the parts about her suitors. they are terrible and annoying and it almost makes you want to throw away the book and give up. but please keep reading. it has its good parts. i promise even the bad guys get a good ending. and thats what makes this book very different than a typical cinderella story telling type of genre.