Princess Pulverizer 4 – Quit Buggin’ Me!

Nancy Krulik's Quit Buggin Me is the fourth Princess Pulverizer book, a funny knight story for 7 year olds about a bossy princess, a runaway rumour and a lot of creepy-crawlies.

What happens

Princess Pulverizer has no interest in being a princess. She wants to be a knight. Her dad, King Alexander, has agreed she can go to Knight School once she's done eight good deeds on a Quest of Kindness. She's done three. Five to go!

She's got help. Lucas is a knight-in-training so nervous he got laughed out of Knight School (his visor keeps falling over his eyes). Dribble is a dragon who was thrown out of his lair for using his fire to make grilled cheese sandwiches instead of burning down villages.

In the kingdom of Yabko-kokomo, the children run away screaming when they see Dribble. They think he's the Yabko-kokomo Beast, who has been dragging people off into the forest. The princess is thrilled. Kidnapped people need rescuing, and that's another good deed! (She tries very hard to wipe the smile off her face.)

Then Lucas and Dribble vanish from an apple orchard full of mysterious holes, and suddenly she's on her own in the rain.

The best thing is that she knows she's bossy. She even knows knights aren't supposed to be. There's a lovely moment when her magic arrow, which always points home, leads her to her friends instead. Home turns out to be wherever your people are.

The baddie is brilliant too. He's a knight who's terrified of spiders, snakes and worms, which gives the princess a very sneaky idea. There's a sword fight, a piñata full of things nobody wants in a piñata, and an underground king who wears a crown made of wriggling worms. Yuck!

It's quick and bouncy with lots of jokes about cheese, and it's great for children who have moved on to chapter books and like their heroines loud.

If your reader is squeamish about bugs, they'll squirm. That's rather the point, though.

What to read next

This is book four. The first chapter sets out the deal with the king and how the three friends met, so it's fine to start here. To see how the whole quest started, though, go back to Grilled Cheese and Dragons, where the princess swings from the rafters at her manners school and lands in the pudding.