Light Princess

Rating:
Summary: Delightfully Whimsical Fairy Tale
Review: George MacDonald was a Scottish clergyman of the mid-to-late 19th century, now known best for a variety of children`s fantasies, such as The Princess and the Goblin (recently made into a moderately successful animated feature), The Princess and Curdie, and the remarkable At the Back of the North Wind, as well as such adult novels as Lilith. Those are novels, but he also wrote some shorter pieces, perhaps aimed at a slightly younger audience (though very enjoyable for all ages). The Light Princess is one of these. (Another is The Golden Key: both books are available in very attractive Sunburst paperback editions, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak).

It is the tale of a princess who is cursed by a mean, jealous, witch so that she has no gravity. The book is full of puns, so MacDonald makes much both of her weightlessness, and the lack of gravity in her character. Naturally her parents are upset and try to have her cured, but to no avail (although the efforts of a couple of Chinese philosophers to provide a cure are rendered amusingly). However the Princess is quite happy with her "light" state (of course it is in her nature to be always happy). In the way of things, a Prince appears, and falls in love with the Princess. Then the witch realizes that her curse has failed to make the Princess unhappy, so she takes further steps, which are thwarted by the selfless behavior of the Prince, and which result in the Princess recovering her gravity: not an unmixed blessing, but one which her new maturity allows her to realize is best in the long run.

This is a delightful story, told with just the right mixture of whimsy and mildly serious moral comment. The characters are lightly and accurately drawn (the Princess` parents and the Chinese philosophers in particular, are delightful), and the story is predictable but still quite imaginative, with a number of nice touches to do with the Princess` weightlessness. Maurice Sendak`s illustrations are wonderful as usual.

Rating:
Summary: bad characters, but good story
Review: To start with i would like to say that i loved bothe the princess and the goblin, and the princess and curdie, so i have nothing agains mcdonald in general. i thought that i would love this book, and i liked the beginning, but after that it started to go downhill. the story wasn't bad, but most of the characters were. the king, even though it said he was kind, only showed meaness and cloesed mindedness. the queen was also closeminded and did nothing when her husband bullied her. and the princess only cared about her self. even though that was part of the curse, it still annoyed me that she could be so shallow. i have no idea what the prince saw in her. despite these faults the story still had a good moral and wasn't a totaly bad read, all in all it could have better, but it could have been a lot worse too.

Rating:
Summary: My most beloved MacDonald book!
Review: When I received this as a gift, I had already read and thoroughly delighted in "At the Back of the North Wind," "The Princess and the Goblin," "The Princess and Curdie," and "The Golden Key." When you read MacDonald, if your heart is right, you feel sheltered--the world he creates for you is as trustworthy and pure as C. S. Lewis's Narnia or Rivendell of Tolkien's Middle Earth. At the same time, you feel challenged to transform your own world and make it more like MacDonald's.

I was expecting another dose of the same awe-inspiring goodness without false piety or preachiness that is MacDonald's literary legacy. In "The Light Princess," however, there was an unexpected ingredient--a sharp wit that pervades the whole book and made me laugh out loud more than once. In a modern world where wit and vulgarity are viewed as conjoined twins, how satisfying a book this is! MacDonald infused delicious humor into his characters without losing the innocence. I fell in love with this book by page three, and it has surpassed "The Princess and the Goblin" as my favorite work of George MacDonald.

The fact that my favorite illustrator of all time, Maurice Sendak, added his talents to this book is icing on the cake. Sendak always grabs the heart and soul of the written work and renders it into drawings too evocative to be believed. The drawing of the prince with only his head above the water took my breath away, and in one fabulous illustration, the hilarious expression on the face of the gravity-deprived infant princess as she floats away reflects the hilarity of the story itself.

If some of MacDonald's other stories have turned you off because they are too long, too "deep" or whatever, don't miss this treasure as a result. It is MacDonald-Light, and by that I mean not only easy to read, but typically illumined with beauty and truth. Plus, it's a love story that pokes fun of its own sentimentality. Anyone not brain-dead and heart-numb ought to adore it.