Rejected Princesses

Rejected Princesses was a blog before it was a book. And Kevin had no idea how much I enjoyed that blog when he bought me the book for Christmas. The author does a great deal of research into remarkable women from both history and mythology. He summarizes their stories, pointedly leaving in the messy bits, and presents each with an illustration done in the style of Disney.

Each story is given a maturity rating and trigger warnings are provided if necessary. The book is arranged so that the stories get progressively more mature as you work through it.

The stories are nice and short. I read one or two while I ate breakfast most mornings for a few months. They don't go into a lot of depth, but they provide a nice jumping off point for learning more about the women presented. Some of them are heroic, some are villainous, some fall somewhere in between. But they're all more complicated than a kid's movie would want to present, and Porath makes a genuine effort to leave those messy complications in so the reader can draw their own conclusions.

I really enjoyed this book, and it will be a nice one to leave on my coffee table. I'm excited for my kids to discover it as they (okay, he for now) get older. Hopefully it sparks an interest in history and a desire to learn the whole story before jumping to conclusions.

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