** This review, as it is for a children's book, will have a different layout than the other pages. The first part is taken from the back of the book. **
"YOU SHALL BE ORDINARY."
So proclaimed the fairy Crustacea at the christening of Her Serene Royal Highness, Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne.
And ordinary she was. With mousy brown hair, a turned-up nose and freckles, Princess Amy was nothing like her six blonde, beautiful princess sisters. She was soordinary, in fact, that no prince could be found to marry her.
But that didn't bother Amy. Who wanted to marry a stuffy old prince, anyway? Amy had other ideas about how to spend her life. Like running off to the forest . . . and an enchanting adventure all her own.
Forward by M. M. Kaye This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest countries.
It was springtime and I was staying with a school friend whose parents owned an old manor house that was full of pictures and books: books for grown-ups and books for children. Among the latter I was delighted to discover some that I knew well, for I had once had a whole set of these myself, only to lose them when a London warehouse, in which most of our family belongings had been stored after my father died, caught fire and burned to the ground.
They were the Andrew Lang fairy books, which Lang had compiled from stories that he had collected from all over the world. From China and India, Persia and Arabia, France, Britain and Spain, Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands, and, in fact, from anywhere where generations of people have told their children fairy tales at bedtime -- which means practically everywhere!
Nowadays The Blue Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, and so on, right through the list of colors, are collector's items that fetch high prices at book auctions. Their charming illustrations were mostly the work of an artist called H. J. Ford, and I had admired them so much, particularly the colored ones, that I had made up my mind at a very early age that I too would be an illustrator of children's books when I grew up.
During the next few days I reread most of them, and it was only after I had read at least twenty of the stories that I noticed something that had never struck me before -- I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been off chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears!
It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write it. England was having a marvelous spring that year, and the day was warm and windless without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story. For what could be a better spot for a princess -- even an ordinary one -- to be born in than an apple orchard in spring?
Apart from the fact that it was my hand that scribbled it all down, I cannot honestly claim to have written her story, for in fact it wrote itself. And at such breakneck speed that it was all I could do to make my pencil keep up with the tale that my head was telling me. It was an experience that has only happened to me on one other occasion, and I only wish it would happen more often, since except for those two occasions I am an extremely slow writer. Snails are not in the same league with me, and I always write in pencil so that I can rub out my mistakes. Yet I cannot remember using my eraser even once when I was writing The Ordinary Princess, and I sometimes think that Amy herself must have been doing the dictating. If so, she couldn't spell any better than I can. I never could spell. And still can't, worse luck!
When the story stopped of its own accord, I copied it out tidily from my rough-notebook onto lined paper, and once I was back again at work in London, a friend typed it out for me. After that, whenever I had any spare time, I would do one of the illustrations for it. The trouble was that I never had much spare time in those days, and that is why the manuscript, and as many of the illustrations as I had managed to do, eventually got put away in a portfolio and forgotten.
It is nice to know that at long last it is seeing the light of day, and I hope very much that readers will enjoy it. For if a time ever comes when children turn up their noses at such things as fairy tales and Father Christmas and Halloween, the world will be a lot duller -- and not nearly such a nice place to live in!
My Review
This story was my favorite when I was younger. I did not know nor care who had written it, as young children do, but I knew I liked the story.
Just a little while before this was written, I was searching my bookcase for something to read, for reading in bed is something I have always loved to do. My bookcases were filled with leftover stories from the childhood I had but recently left behind, and I glanced over the titles. I was tired, and did not want a challenging book. Finally, I saw The Ordinary Princess sitting where it had always sat, three shelves from the bottom in the middle. I pulled it out, because the story had faded in my mind, and my eyes were drawn to a few lines under the title: 'written and illustrated by M.M. KAYE author of The Far Pavilions.' I couldn't believe my luck! I had this M. M. Kaye storybook from 1986 that had just been sitting there, and I had never noticed. Not even when I was searching all the books in my house for her books so I could write my M. M. Kaye Page one afternoon. So I took it to bed with me and read it. I loved the story -- so unlike the other books I have read by her, aimed toward a younger generation. The characters were as well developed as Winter, Alex, Anjuli, Ashton, etc. The story was captivating and simple -- the seventh princess of a Royal family was born. She was given many gifts, and then this fairy makes her ordinary. So the princess cannot find a prince, so she runs away to live in the forest. Soon, she becomes a kitchen maid in another castle and . . . oh! But I cannot spoil it for you! Read it yourself! A quick read at 112 pages, and well worth your time.
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