Princess Academy 2 – Palace of Stone

Shannon Hale's Palace of Stone is a thoughtful story for 10 year olds about a girl from a mountain village who goes to the big city and finds it isn't quite what she imagined.

What happens

This is the second Princess Academy book, so Miri and her friends from Mount Eskel already share a lot of history. Now they're heading down the mountain for a whole year in the capital, Asland.

Their friend Britta is to marry the prince, and she wants the academy girls there for the wedding. There's even a place for Miri at the Queen's Castle, a university full of scholars. Miri can hardly wait.

But her stomach drops at the thought of going. She's leaving her pa and her gentle sister Marda behind. Peder is coming to Asland as a stone carver's apprentice, but he still hasn't asked her the question she keeps waiting for (she notices this a LOT). Miri feels two ways about nearly everything, and that's the heart of the book.

And there's a worrying letter from Katar, who now speaks for Mount Eskel at court. Things are happening in Asland, she writes, and it's too dangerous to say more.

At first the city is dazzling. Glass windows in carriages! Soft sofas you're actually meant to sit on! Then, almost as soon as they arrive, a man tries to shoot the king, and Miri learns that the city's poorest people, the "shoeless", are going hungry. Katar wants her to find out quietly whether a revolution is coming.

At the Queen's Castle she meets Timon, an older student with very blue eyes who seems to know a lot about the changes coming. On Miri's very first day a teacher asks the class whether they'd save a priceless painting or a murderer from a fire, and the whole room starts arguing at once. Which would your reader save?

That's what I really like about it. The big questions come at Miri the way they'd come at any child. She's sure she knows the answer, then two hungry, barefoot children grab at her robes begging for a coin, and suddenly she isn't sure of anything.

There's some real weight here. A guard steps in front of the bullet meant for the king, and there's a lot of talk of hunger and of what happens to traitors. It's handled gently, but it isn't a light read.

What to read next

If they're after another girl from a hard-working home who ends up somewhere very grand, try The Book of a Thousand Days, also by Shannon Hale. Dashti grew up with yaks on the open grasslands and now she's a lady's maid, bricked up in a tower with her mistress.