The Rescue Princesses 12 – The Golden Shell

Paula Harrison's The Golden Shell is a Rescue Princesses story for 7 year olds about a nervous new girl, a baby bunny and a secret door in a castle school.

What happens

Princess Ella arrives at the Royal Academy for Princesses two weeks after everyone else. It's in a red-stone castle by the sea called Harebell Castle. Her mum loved it there and hasn't stopped talking about it. Ella isn't so sure.

Then she finds out that every princess has brought a pet. There's a parrot who keeps escaping the bird house, a hamster called Fluff and a pony called Strawberry. Ella left her puppy at home because nobody told her she could bring him.

Her three new roommates fix that fast. They've asked the headmistress, and Ella gets to choose one of the baby rabbits in the pet barn. She picks a honey-coloured one with a pink nose and calls her Daisy.

Lottie, Rosalind and Summer have a secret too. They're the Rescue Princesses, a club that helps animals in danger. They have magic rings that let them talk to each other, and a battered old Book of Ninja hidden under a mattress.

There's also Molly. She's an older girl in charge of their tower and she's REALLY mean. Every time they try to visit their pets she invents another chore.

So the girls use a ninja move to get past her. They stuff a stripy sock with paper, give it plastic wings and dangle it outside Molly's window like a giant bee (while buzzing in the corridor). It's very funny and it works!

Then Daisy goes missing in the Throne Room. The only clue is a carved golden shell on the back of the throne and a little door Ella thought was a locked cupboard.

This is a lovely gentle adventure. Nothing truly scary happens, the rabbit is the thing everyone's worried about, and the friendship feels warm right from the first chapter. Ella's first-day nerves will feel very familiar if your reader has ever been the new one.

It's got secret passages, pets, sneaking about after dinner and a bossy older girl to outwit. What more could you ask of a castle school?

What to read next

For more Rescue Princesses, try The Amber Necklace. Princess Zina and her friends try to save a troop of ring-tailed lemurs when their trees start being cut down.