Read Princess Pulverizer 1 – Grilled Cheese and Dragons free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Nancy Krulik's Grilled Cheese and Dragons is a knight story for 7 year olds about a princess with absolutely no interest in being one.
Her father named her Serena. She has pointed out that Serena comes from serene, that serene means calm and peaceful, and that she is neither. So she's renamed herself Princess Pulverizer.
Her school is the Royal School of Ladylike Manners. She's meant to be learning which fork to use and how to dance the saltarello. The dance class sits directly above the Knight School training yard, which is not helping.
She wants a sword. She wants a horse. She wants a seat at the Skround Table, which is square with rounded corners, obviously.
Her dad says no. Not because she's a girl, he's careful to say, but because being a knight takes honour, kindness and sacrifice, and those aren't exactly her strong points.
He isn't wrong, and she knows it.
So he sends her on a Quest of Kindness. Eight good deeds, with proof, and then she can go to Knight School.
Her first attempt is a masterpiece. She spots an old woman with a heavy basket, insists on helping, tugs, and puts the woman's potatoes in the mud. Within a minute somebody is shouting "thief" and she's running.
That's the joke the whole book runs on. She's brave, she's determined, she's completely certain she's right, and kindness turns out to be a skill.
Then she overhears that a queen's jewels have been stolen by somebody tall enough to reach a tower window, and she goes looking for an ogre.
The ogre is real. Getting into his castle is easy, because she simply sings badly until he captures her. Getting out again is where it falls apart.
She ends up locked in a tower with a bowl of gruel, a knight-in-training called Lucas who's frightened of caterpillars, and Lucas's best friend Dribble, who's a dragon with wind.
There's nothing to worry about here for a seven year old. The ogre shouts in capital letters and forgets to lock doors. Nobody gets hurt. It's all burps and bad singing and a heroine who thinks very well of herself.
For a child who enjoys a heroine who charges at absolutely everything, this is a happy place to start, and it is the first of the series.
The next one is Worse, Worser, Wurst, where an evil wizard has made off with a kingdom's jester and taken all the laughing with him.
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