The Cherry Pie Princess

The Cherry Pie Princess by Vivian French is a funny fairy tale for 7 year olds about the one princess in the palace who'd rather be baking.

What happens

Princess Peony is the youngest of seven sisters. The other six think libraries are dreadfully boring and would rather fill the shelves with hats and handbags. Peony LOVES books. On a royal visit to the library, she asks the kind old dwarf librarian whether there are any books about cooking.

He tells her yes. That's his big mistake, because nobody is allowed to talk to a royal, and the king has him thrown in the dungeon.

Peony doesn't know that. Years go by. She teaches herself to bake the best cherry pie in the kingdom from a library book she never managed to take back (and her father is furious when he finds her in the kitchen covered in flour).

When she finally finds out what happened to Mr Longbeard, she's horrified. So she does something about it. She climbs down from her balcony on a rope plaited from the frills of a very pink dress. She marches into the banqueting hall and tells the king, in front of all the servants, that he's made a terrible mistake!

Meanwhile there's a new baby prince, a grand christening, three rather rusty Fairy Godmothers and a Hag who hasn't been invited. You can imagine how pleased she is about that. Oh, and the palace cat, Basil, is secretly a spy.

It's a lovely twist on the old fairy tales. Peony is kind and brave and a bit of a chatterbox, and she says what she thinks, even to a king. Who doesn't want a heroine like that? The grown-ups around her are wonderfully silly, from a governess called Miss Beef to a jester who ended up in the dungeon over a joke the king didn't like.

Her sisters aren't very nice to her (they call her "the freak" and trick her into wearing the wrong dress), but it's all played for laughs and she's more than a match for them.

It would be a lovely one to read together at bedtime, with plenty of big voices to do.

What to read next

If your reader likes a hero with a big heart who gets overlooked at home, The Adventures of Alfie Onion is another comic tale from Vivian French. Alfie is the eighth son, sent along as the Faithful Servant when his spoilt big brother goes off adventuring.