Her cousin, Oswald, learns all the traditional lessons, which is one of his strengths. By the end, she appreciates the manners she’s learned and the skill with a needle that’s forced upon her. TraditionĪlthough Aurore does her own thing and learns many valuable lessons, she also realizes that by neglecting traditional pursuits there are a lot of other valuable lessons she isn’t learning. This is something I only realized when looking back on the story, however.

All of the other critical characters in the story are male. She also learns healing.Īside from her mother and her nurse, Aurore has no female friends. She learns to throw a knife, thatch a roof, and shoot a bow. Aurore isn’t a traditional princess-she doesn’t have a particular fondness for learning needlepoint and dancing. Once she proves herself worthy, she’s named his heir despite being a girl. This is acknowledged, and then Aurore’s father goes about ignoring it. It’s a fairytale kingdom, so of course boys are preferred over girls. SPOILER ALERT: Things you might want to know before suggesting this to your kid Sexism Nevertheless, it’s a book worth reading and I’ve added more books by Cameron Dokey to my to-read list. The fact that it’s part of a series for young readers is no excuse-in fact, it’s all the more reason to do better. I’m bothered that the publisher didn’t give this beautifully written book the attention it deserved. I found several errors, which is always distracting to me, and there were times when Aurore’s foreshadowing was misleading in ways that I don’t think were intentional. I have one quibble-the book was not particularly well proofread. Note: my daughter had a little trouble getting into the book because of this approach, but she stuck with it and she really enjoyed it.

This approach leads to a very character driven story, for we get to know Aurore quite well and through her the important people in her life. It deals philosophically with issues such as self-perception and perception of others in ways that are very appropriate for middle grade readers. She also explores why things happen on a level that I think will engage readers from a mature 10 years old on up through adults. She occasionally addresses the reader, directly connecting her own thoughts and experiences to anyone reading the book. Told in retrospective, the narrative is in reflective first person from Princess Aurore’s point of view. This is no mean feat! I thoroughly enjoyed this novel which occasionally brought me to happy tears as things fell into place (I’m also sleep deprived, which may factor in, but it’s still some masterful storytelling!). Beauty Sleep manages to retell the story of “Sleeping Beauty” while incorporating a proactive princess and true love despite the curse of a hundred year sleep.

Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey