Read Princess Academy 3 – The Forgotten Sisters free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Shannon Hale's The Forgotten Sisters is a swampy adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who's sent to teach three royal cousins when all she wants is to go home.
Miri has been away from her mountain village for a whole year. Her bags are packed with presents for Pa and her sister Marda. The wagons are loaded. Then a royal guard strides across the courtyard, and the king wants to see her. Right now.
The king has cousins living far away in Lesser Alva. They need a princess academy, and the queen won't have anyone but Miri as their tutor. So instead of going home, Miri is put on a ship to a swamp. (She drives a hard bargain for her village before she agrees, which is very Miri.)
This is the third Princess Academy book, and it turns things upside down. Miri used to be the student. Now she's the teacher, and she hasn't a clue how to do it.
Her plan is to be imposing. It lasts about a minute. She arrives hot and muddy, faints on the floor and wakes up to three sisters who've never heard the word tutor. Astrid carries a sharpened stick. Felissa is almost always smiling. Sus, the youngest, wants to know if she's brought any city food.
It's so funny watching Miri get everything wrong. She walks into their house uninvited, which you never, ever do in Lesser Alva. She's bitten by a snake on her first morning. Then she wins a scrap of respect by skinning a rat for breakfast faster than anyone expected!
Those breakfasts are worth a mention if you've got a squeamish reader. The sisters hunt what they eat, and Sus sucks the eyes out of a roasted rat. It's played for laughs and it's over in a line.
What makes it lovely, though, is how homesick Miri is. She keeps a little stone hawk from home in her pocket. She sings nonsense songs into the wind on the ship. Anyone who's been sent somewhere they didn't choose will know that feeling.
And there's a mystery sitting underneath it all. Where's the money the king sends every month? And why does the palace care so much about three girls in a swamp?
If your reader hasn't met Miri yet, the first Princess Academy book is where she starts, on a mountain where everyone quarries stone and a girl is desperate to be allowed to help.
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