It seems I really enjoy these short, cozy Disney Princess tales, which are sweet and engaging even if they are low-stakes and aimed mostly at children. (It's a good mark of a story, I say, if it doesn't lose its appeal once you stop being a child.) I read another Five-Minute Princess Stories collection because I had such good luck with the first one, and this second collection was every bit as good. “Sweet” is my keyword for these stories, which often turned out quite heartwarming, though it wasn't at the expense of some higher-stakes problems and a couple of amazing villain portrayals. Plus, a surprising number of them were focused on the Princesses' Before lives, which I always love to see since, with the exceptions of Belle and Ariel, I feel there's always a disproportionate slant towards stories that come after the movies. This time, instead of multiple stories for the most popular Princesses, we had one story for every official Disney Princess Snow White through Moana, though they come in no particular order. The stories, complete with my summaries and commentary, are:
Moana: A Path To the Sea
I still haven't seen Moana, but I have seen clips, including her encounter with a baby sea turtle back when she was the most adorable little toddler. So I knew what they were referencing for this storyline, when Moana, as an older child (I want to say about ten or twelve?), re-encounters that very same sea turtle and they become good friends. When Lolo, as Moana names the turtle, goes to lay her eggs, a storm traps the eggs in their underground nest and Moana must gather her friends to work together and save the babies. Moana's friends I noticed were all immediately willing to help her with this sort of work and no one complained – either they all love animals as much as she does, or they didn't want to disobey the chief's daughter! I really appreciated all the help Moana and friends gave to the baby sea turtles, especially when they shield the babies from hungry seabirds on their way to the ocean. Sea turtles have a very rough start to life, and I will never think it's a bad idea to give those poor little critters some extra help!
Gramma Tala is the main adult figure in this story, and Moana's parents are nowhere to be seen. Most likely they don't know how much she's been hanging around in and near the ocean every day....
Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Flight
Most Beauty and the Beast stories insist on showing us Beast and his servants in their magical cursed forms, stretching the amount of time Belle spent at the enchanted castle almost indefinitely, as if everyone wouldn't be a lot happier if we would finally let them carry on their lives as normal. A few show Belle from before the movie, but always in her quiet village life. This story gives us something I've never seen before: Belle in what not only seems to be a story from before the movie, but also from before the quiet village!!
Belle and Maurice are riding off together on a journey to visit the French National Library, and Belle is wearing a smart red travelling dress much nicer than anything you would wear living in a small provincial village. Along the way, Belle meets and befriends a young woman named Sophie, who is an inventor, traveller, and writer, and Sophie gives Belle and Maurice an exciting ride in her newly made hot-air balloon. Now, in my mind it was always very clear that Belle did not grow up in the quiet village. In the song Belle, she sings about “the morning that we came”, implying she remembers a time before she and her father came to the village, and also Gaston sings about wanting to marry Belle since the first time he saw her, which suggests, since Gaston probably lived in the village his whole life, that Belle first came when she was nearing adulthood. The whole thing also fits in with the original Beauty and the Beast story, where Belle's father was a millionaire who lost his fortune. If this story is really a glimpse into the life Belle used to know, the life she left behind before the start of the movie – that's absolutely fascinating. Imagine going from the French National Library to a small bookshop where she's already read everything they have faster than they can bring in new items. Imagine going from peers like Sophie who share all Belle's interests, to the Traffic Light Girls whose only interest is fawning all over a guy who punches his supposed best friend all the time and believes women shouldn't think. It adds a new dimension to Belle's longing in the film – a dimension which, because of the song's lyrics, I believe was already supposed to be there – a longing for not what she was hoping to find, but to bring back what she'd lost. Somehow it makes Beast's already super-sweet gift of a library suddenly that much more meaningful.
Pocahontas: The Winter Journey
I was already familiar with this story, since a shortened version appears in my Disney Princess colouring book (along with an after-Aladdin story with a suspicious lack of Aladdin, an after-Princess and the Frog story, and a Beauty and the Beast story which seems very confused as to which era it takes place in). In it, Pocahontas's tribe is on their way to their winter camp when Pocahontas discovers a lost baby deer, and stops to help the fawn return to his mother. The shortened version was already quite sweet, but this one provides us with even more details, like the way Pocahontas wandered off from the other tribe members in order to enjoy the falling snow and that's how she found the baby deer, how she was able to figure out which way to take the fawn, and how she did have some difficulty at first getting the fawn to follow her. The story also gives us some insight into Pocahontas's culture (I presume it does; I take no responsibility if the information ends up not being accurate!), telling us how the different villages in the Powhatan tribe travel to this camp and work together throughout the winter months. We get a real sense of Pocahontas's love for nature and for her people, which ties together the two plotlines of the Powhatan winter camp and the lost baby deer into one connecting theme about family, community, and working together to help one another.
The Little Mermaid: Ariel Makes Waves
In most cases, Ariel's getting a pre-Little Mermaid story wouldn't interest me that much. It's all she ever seems to get, as if you couldn't possibly do anything fun with a former mermaid navigating the land, as if the only interesting thing about bold, spunky Ariel is her species. But this story is different. It's one of the “Disney Princess Beginnings” tales, and gives us a fun look at Ariel, not as a mermaid, but as a little mer-girl.
Ariel is sad one day because her father has to attend to court instead of playing with his daughters at the reef. I imagine this must happen fairly often, since Triton is, after all, the King, but that doesn't mean Ariel can't be disappointed every time it does. I did wonder, very briefly, whether Ariel would really be sad her father can't spend time with her when they see the world so differently, but then, after thinking about it a minute, it makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure what Ariel really wanted in the movie was for her father to accept and understand her, not really to run away and never see him again like Ursula made her think she wanted. So I kind of like Ariel wanting to be closer to her daddy when she's little!
Anyway, when the seven mer-girls go out to play in the reef, a strong current sweeps Ariel and two of her sisters away, and now they must be brave and follow Ariel's lead in order to get back home.
It was really cool, seeing Ariel's bravery and daring already developed at that young age (six? Seven?), especially to the extent that her sisters, who must see Ariel as the baby of the family, were both listening to her! Along the journey, they run into certain details from Ariel's movie, like we see her first meeting with a bird who is clearly supposed to be Scuttle. I did feel like there were a few too many firsts for one adventure: the story also makes it out like this is the first time Ariel has ever been up to the surface of the ocean or hidden in a shipwreck, and she even meets a shy light-up fish whose design reminds me suspiciously of Flounder's. The sheer volume made it a little hard to suspend my disbelief – I would have kept Ariel's first meeting with Scuttle, but made it out that she had been up to the surface and hidden in shipwrecks before, and that was how she knew to suggest it to her sisters.
I really liked the higher stakes in this story, plus the way it explored Ariel's love for her family without playing down on her love of adventure and the human world. Little Ariel has the cutest design, too – I love how they added a line of freckles across her nose! This and the other Beginnings story that comes later in the collection settle it – I need to find the rest of the Disney Princess Beginnings stories now!
Aladdin: A Proper Princess
One of the only pre-Aladdin Disney Princess stories I have ever seen, this story opens with Jasmine being bored in her daily princess life and wanting something more to do. They got Jasmine's main conflict exactly right, but that also left me a little worried, because Jasmine is not supposed to solve her main conflict before she meets Aladdin. How could they possibly resolve this conflict and give this particular story a happy ending, without contradicting the movie??
I must give the story credit, because it handled the challenge masterfully. Jasmine discovers, through letters the people have been writing to her father (which she wasn't supposed to be reading), that the city's market square is badly in need of repairs. She's not supposed to interfere, but determined to help the people in any way she can, Jasmine finds a way to make it happen. And she does this without ever leaving the palace walls, making any real friends apart from Rajah, or being allowed to marry for love. I love how the story has Jasmine do several things she wasn't really supposed to be doing – they understood her character; obedient she is not! I do question whether a couple of things in this story could really have happened before the events of the movie, though. If Jasmine had ever climbed that tree to the top of the palace wall to see the marketplace – well, in a way, it makes sense to think she'd climbed the tree sometime before the movie, because when she decides to run away at the beginning she already knows exactly how she's going to do it. But if she had looked down at the city before, I can't imagine she ever really got that close of a look at it, because when she's out there for the first time in the movie, it's a total shock to her system and she doesn't know what to expect! I also can't see Jasmine really being in charge of something so important as reading all the people's letters to the palace. It didn't sound to me from her introduction scene like she had any sort of important responsibilities beyond getting married, and besides the more Jasmine had heard from people who lived out in the city, the more likely it is that she would know details about the city – like that she has to pay when she takes merchants' wares. That said, I actually quite liked Jasmine's innocent assumption that all the letters her father had received were about the rundown market square. I don't think the story actually meant for this to make Jasmine seem inexperienced or naive about life outside the palace... but since I can't find it actually believable that there was only one major problem in the entire city or that every single citizen agreed on which problems were the most important, I like the way it ends up making her look, anyway.
If it were up to me, I would have changed the ending very slightly to make Jasmine's successful project a one-off thing. It would still feel like she'd triumphed without giving her too much power before she was supposed to get it. (If Jasmine is going to be reading all the people's letters, though, I kind of want to see her reading a few where merchants are complaining that some street rat stole food from them, and describe the incredibly clever ways he escaped before they could catch him!)
One thing the story did excellently was their handling of Jafar. He never does anything too scary for a story that can be read at bedtime, but they don't try to tone him down either. He feels exactly like the same evil, slippery character from the movie, who is simply wearing his Most Trusted Advisor mask. And can I just say, I feel like this is exactly how he would “help” the Sultan rule Agrabah, by confiscating all the letters the people are writing to the Sultan with their “silly complaints”, and keeping the Sultan in the dark about what his subjects actually need. (That's another reason I think Jasmine reading the people's complaints should have been more of a one-off thing: in the movie, if Jasmine had such an important job that Jafar was trying to make sure remained undone, I think she would have found herself in great danger from yon Royal Vizier....)
I loved getting a closer look into the runnings of Agrabah Palace, as well as the rare chance to see Jasmine in her life pre-Aladdin. The only other thing I would have liked to see is some more delving into Jasmine's Princess life. The story is called “A Proper Princess”, and throughout, people keep telling Jasmine her job is to be a proper princess and what she should not do on account of that, but no one ever tells her what she is expected to do all day. It's something I see touched on very little – the writers don't seem afraid to explore culture when it comes to Pocahontas, Mulan, or Moana! Are the writers afraid of portraying an Arab princess inaccurately – or perhaps too accurately??
Tangled: The Beauty of Mistakes
Rapunzel, new to her princess life, is unsure what she is supposed to be doing with herself now. She tries to help with chores around the palace, but is told not to, so instead she gets the idea from her governess to teach painting – but the mishaps aren't through yet, not until Rapunzel learns that none of her mistakes were failures at all, but were leading her down a beautiful path to discover a fun craft project she wouldn't have otherwise. The story's message was very obvious, but it was also something I feel a lot of children (and plenty of adults!) need to hear, surrounded as we are by pressure and high expectations and situations where the Ones in Authority are looking for one particular right answer, with harsh words being the first reaction if they deem us wrong.
I've said I love getting more Disney Princess “before” stories, but in Rapunzel's case, I am more than happy to see her in her Happily Ever After, free of the tower, and with her cute short brown hair that represents her freedom and definitely deserves more love!
I find it interesting that Rapunzel was their princess of choice for a storyline where she tries to help with the castle chores because she's new to royalty. She's not the only princess who fits that requirement: Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora come immediately to mind! I'm not saying Rapunzel doesn't fit, because she absolutely does, I just really really want this to be the first of many times a Disney Princess gets this plotline. (In case anyone is interested, I still really want to see a story about Snow White settling into the Prince's castle and insisting on helping with all the chores and not taking no for an answer!)
But for this particular story, Rapunzel really was the best Princess for the job, because she felt that trying to help clean the castle had been a mistake. Of course her upbringing would leave her with a far different perception of mistakes than, say, Aurora with her loving aunties! When you consider each time Rapunzel told herself she had done something wrong, it might have been Mother Gothel's voice running through her head... when you remember that when she thinks “in the tower, doing the chores had been right”, Mother Gothel was not trying to teach Rapunzel independence, but was instead probably very happy her living fountain of youth could double as free labour... this is why I'm happy they make so many post-Tangled stories, and never mind how much better some people think her long blonde hair is!
Mulan: The Dragon Boat Race
This is one of the stories in the collection that takes place after the Princess's movie: Mulan is spunky, confident, and rocking that shorter hair; Mushu is present; and Grandmother Fa makes reference to Mulan's having left the village before, presumably meaning that time she went to war. Now Mulan is paying it forward, helping the other people in her village break out of their comfort zones and try new things too. Mulan's village has never competed in the Dragon Boat Race at the Duanwu festival before, but, “there's a first time for everything”, as she says, and I will tell you, it isn't that hard to figure out what the theme of this story is, because all throughout the characters are always saying those exact words! Mulan leads her team through their first-ever dragon boat competition, and even when they run into mishaps and obstacles, she encourages them to work together and never give up. I liked getting to see a Chinese festival and the activities that go with it – I always love any time a Disney Princess story takes the opportunity to show us some culture! I also liked that the story came down more on the side that the important thing was that Mulan tried something new, did her best, and didn't give up, and not on whether she won. It wouldn't have made sense for a team that had never done this before to win against all these seasoned players – and besides, that would probably have sent the message that whether you were right to take the risk depends on whether you win! As it is, we're left with the definite sense that you succeeded so long as you were brave enough to try.
Sleeping Beauty: Aurora Plays the Part
Or perhaps this story should really be called “Briar Rose plays the part”, because it features little-girl Aurora living in the forest cottage with her three fairy aunties, and the text always calls her Rose. It's another Disney Princess Beginnings story, and considering I haven't been able to find a full collection of those to read yet, I was very happy to find two of them in this book! I always love getting to see more of Aurora's time being raised by the three fairies, too, and I only wish they had been more prominent in the story. The fairies were hardly in it, and never as individuals!
Young Briar Rose is lonely, just like in the movie, and at this age she's dreaming of finding a friend she can talk to, rather than a lover. That dream seems to come true, if only for a little while, when Rose meets a girl named Grace, who lives with a travelling band of actors passing through Aurora's forest. I liked the way Grace looks a lot like Rose, and yet had straight blonde hair and ordinary blue eyes, so Aurora still looks like she was the one who'd been blessed by a fairy with the gift of loveliness.
Rose and Grace want each other's lives so badly they agree to switch places, a scheme that doesn't last very long before Rose is forced to confess, and almost gets them into trouble with both Briar Rose's aunties and Grace's grandmother. I say almost, and I did think, sometimes, that the fairies were a little too lenient in this story with the whole Aurora-meeting-strangers thing, considering how strict their rules were about that and knowing the real reason behind it! Actually, I found myself asking, the whole way through, whether this story could have happened at all. I mean, I really, really wanted it to. Poor Briar Rose just wanted a real friend, and I would hate to let movie accuracy get in the way of letting her have that for just a few nights. I'll have to rewatch the Sleeping Beauty scene where she tells the forest animals how lonely she is, to see if we have any chance of inferring that she did once, long ago, have a real friend for a few days. If yes, I really want a post-Sleeping Beauty story where they reconnect as adults. Otherwise, I will have to conclude that this story was a daydream conjured up by our resident dreamer princess – which still makes sense, and makes the whole thing very heartbreaking, because then she never got any friends and honestly the poor girl deserves some friends and some company. I don't care how many evil fairies are after her!
The Princess and the Frog: Tiana's Growing Experiment
It all started with Tiana wanting some ghost peppers to put in her new jambalaya recipe (the Five-Minute Princess stories agree with the Disney Princess comics that Tiana is a fan of hot foods!). Unable to find any in New Orleans, the resourceful, always-up-for-a-challenge Tiana decides to write to a farm in India asking for some seeds, and plants her own. Before you know it, everyone – Naveen, Louis, even Charlotte – has been bit by the gardening bug.
Naveen is first to join her, and it's nice to see their playful, supportive interactions together. It's especially nice since at the beginning of the story, Tiana is supposedly talking to Naveen about her failed attempts to find ghost peppers, and the story doesn't give us so much as a word or gesture from Naveen in reply! Tiana might as well have been talking to the kitchen wall for all Naveen does in that scene... although on the plus side, Naveen does look very handsome in pale blue pyjamas. Louis is next to join the gardening craze, and there's something funny and adorable about an alligator growing vegetables. Charlotte was entirely against the idea when she first found out about it, and I thought: “Well, that's okay. Let Charlotte dislike dirt and gardening! Not everyone has to like everything.” But I could tell from the way the story was going that Charlotte was going to join them, and she did remain true to herself when she did, putting an extra-big apron over her dress to keep out all traces of dirt and only growing pretty things like flowers.
The gardening turns into a fun shared hobby and a way to bring all the friends together – and provides them with a pretty tasty supper in the end, too!
Brave: Merida's Challenge
This was probably my favourite story in the entire collection. Merida laughs at her brothers for thinking they could climb the Crone's Tooth, a tall and dangerous mountain which apparently Merida has climbed. She implies she doesn't think her brothers are strong or brave enough to do it, and right from the first page, I could already see where this was going – No, don't tempt them, Merida!! So of course the triplets go right off to climb the Crone's Tooth, and almost immediately Hamish gets stuck and is left dangling from a ridge by his fingertips. Harris and Hubert run back to get Merida for help, and the three of them plus Angus the horse all have to work together to save Hamish – leading Merida to realize how brave her brothers really are.
There was a great level of excitement and danger here by the standards of Five-Minute Princess Stories, and it really delved into Merida as a human character who makes mistakes and owns up to them – much more how I remember her from the movie than the “tomboy” stereotype she always seems to get shoved into! Since the movie was all about Merida's relationship with family – namely her mother – I felt it was a good “same but different” choice to have the focus here be on Merida and her brothers. And the triplets get a little more characterization too: more than just troublemakers, we see a possible motivator for them in wanting to prove themselves to their big sister. Which, since Merida saw them as just her “annoying little brothers”, who can get away with anything while she can't, really throws an interesting spin on things!
Snow White: Snow White and the Three Giants
One thing we know for sure is that sweet Snow White will make friends wherever she goes. On her way to the Dwarfs' cottage one day, Snow takes a wrong turn and finds herself in a cottage so big she appears miniature. When the Three Giants come home, Snow is scared at first, but then she does the admirable, brave Snow White thing to do: steps forward and introduces herself. The Three Giants turn out to be very kind people, which I like because there's no reason an entire species should be mean just because they might look scary. Besides we know Snow White has the ability to win over everyone (except the Evil Queen)!
Now all that remains is for Snow White to bring the Dwarfs and Giants together and help everybody make friends. Again in beautiful Snow White form, she throws a party and has everyone play a game in which they all discover how much they really have in common. They mostly stick to physical traits in this game, but I actually like how that works in this case, because the biggest difference between a dwarf and a giant is physical – the size – so it makes sense to point out how beyond that, they really do look exactly the same. Also these physical traits were mostly things all humans have despite other differences, so the whole thing becomes a lovely metaphor for looking at our shared humanity rather than at “the other” – a message that may be even more important for adults than for children!
The only thing I might have changed was probably just due to my own expectations: I saw what the premise would be and figured there would be some major plot point about Dwarfs and Giants having some long-standing enmity that Snow White would have to help them overcome. But there was hardly any mention of mistrust between the two groups at all, other than a comment of Grumpy's that “you can't trust anyone tall!” which made me laugh out loud. (Grumpy is the best.) So I did feel a little bit like the story solved a conflict which didn't even exist – and yet, it really wasn't, because that message of friendship and oneness will always be relevant.
Cinderella: Opening Night
We've all heard of breaking the cycle, and it's one reason I'm highly against any suggestion that Cinderella should have “taken revenge” and killed her step-family in the night or whatever. The whole point was that Cinderella stayed strong and kind even in the most trying circumstances, and her constant belief and hope – and refusal to lose herself and become like her step-family – paid off. Well here, Cinderella goes beyond just breaking the cycle: she starts a completely new, positive one.
It all starts when Lady Tremaine invites a bunch of young girls over to her house for music lessons. Lady Tremaine is so deliciously creepy in how she'll do something like this, but obviously not out of the goodness of her heart, it must just be to look good and keep up appearances in society. Lady Tremaine is handled as well as Jafar was: not too scary for a bedtime story, but with no attempts to tone her down, and she still feels like the same, delightfully demonic character.
Anastasia and Drizella are jealous of a student named Carine, who has the best voice in the class. So they bully and belittle her, trying to break her confidence and bring her down to their level. Cinderella fixes that. She leads Carine around town and has her sing at all these different establishments, Carine's confidence growing each time as her voice is constantly met with praise. Finally, a grand opportunity for Carine comes along, but if Cinderella can't be there to offer her support Carine may lose her chance.
The thought of Cinderella, even in her desperate situation, going out of her way to make sure someone else can follow their dreams is the most touching, empowering thing, and this story shows us perfectly what Cinderella's strength was really meant to be. She is so different from Anastasia and Drizella, who believe if they're miserable, everybody else needs to be, too! And since the story is told in the form of a flashback, we can see how it turned out right from the beginning: by the time Cinderella is a princess, Carine is a popular singing star. Cinderella taking the time to build Carine up had no negative effect whatsoever on her own dreams coming true! (Unfortunately, in the present-day scenes where Cinderella is a princess, she is wearing that new inferior hairstyle from the Princess merch with the flat sideswept front. Please do not tell me that in later life Cinderella got rid of those adorable nineteen fifties bangs!) Right at the end comes my favourite part: Carine encourages a new, up-and-coming performer about her voice, using the exact same words Cinderella once used to encourage Carine. Talk about breaking the cycle!
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