THE BIRTHDAY BALL
by Lois Lowry and illustrated by Jules Feiffer
A very bored princess opts for change in this droll take on the Cinderella story. Five days before her 16th Birthday Ball, at which she’s expected to choose her future husband, Princess Patricia Priscilla borrows her chambermaid’s homespun dress, braids her curls and sheds her shoes to escape the palace and masquerade as peasant girl “Pat” in the village school. She quickly develops a crush on the handsome-but-poor young schoolmaster. Meanwhile, her wealthy noble suitors, the repellant Duke of Dyspepsia, the narcissistic Prince of Pustula and the disgusting conjoint Counts of Coagulatia prepare to attend the ball and win the princess. Faced with such totally repulsive choices, the proactive princess invites the whole village to her ball and upsets royal protocol in the best possible way. In her clever fairy-tale reconstruction, Lowry transforms the traditional princess into a refreshingly egalitarian heroine with a mind of her own. The hilarious, original and truly loathsome suitors are aptly memorialized in Feiffer’s spritely black-and-white caricature illustrations. Guaranteed to generate giggles and guffaws. (Fairy tale. 8-12).