Second Term at Tall Towers

Lou Kuenzler's Second Term at Tall Towers is a funny, friendly princess-school story for 6 year olds about a very clumsy princess who's sure she's seen a dragon.

What happens

Grace isn't your usual princess. She'd much rather climb trees and gallop about on Billy, her scruffy black-and-white unicorn, than practise her curtsy. Now it's spring term at Tall Towers Princess Academy, and she's just spotted a flash of red scales over the cliffs.

The trouble is, everybody knows the Coronet Crimson dragons are extinct. The school's gamekeeper chased the last of them off the island fifteen years ago.

So nobody believes Grace. Worse, her wild gallop back to warn everyone ends with Billy tearing up the lawn and a hundred hand-made invitations in the mud. Scarlet and Izumi, her two best friends, are upset. Her mean cousin Precious is thrilled. Before long Grace isn't speaking to any of them.

It's a lovely little story about friendship. Scarlet and Izumi try to help by secretly writing out Grace's punishment lines for her, and Grace is furious. Haven't we all had a moment when someone being kind made us feel even more hopeless?

There's plenty to giggle at along the way. Grace picks a flower called dragon's heart for the spring ballet, and it smells like, well, poo (Precious has an even ruder name for it). There's a huge, soppy dragon hound called Flump who only wants his tummy tickled. And there's Grace in ballet class, stamping her feet with her bun in a total tangle.

She makes a new friend too. Hetty is the gamekeeper's little niece, and she has always dreamed of riding a unicorn, even though only princesses are allowed. Grace thinks that rule is ridiculous!

Two of the characters have lost their mums, which is mentioned in passing as part of their background.

It's a proper chapter book, so it makes a lovely bedtime read-aloud as well as a first taste of reading alone.

What to read next

If this is your reader's first meeting with Grace, they can meet her properly in A Royal Disaster, the book where she arrives at the harbour in a shaggy yak-fur cloak and the other princesses think she's a monster.