'Children love fairy stories. They suspend disbelief and accept all manner of strange happenings as perfectly normal. How many people would feel a pea under their mattress? Probably none, but that doesn't stop children enjoying the story of the Princess and the Pea. The Real Princess: A Mathemagical Tale...has a lovely mathematical slant on this traditional tale. Use the story for counting, sequences, ordinal numbers and much more.' -Scholastic Child Education PLUS 'For the slightly older child, 'The Real Princess: A Mathemagical Tale' ought to prove a beguiling mix of number lore and fairy tale. The plot elements will be familiar: three princes looking for brides, a king with three bags of gold and a queen with nine magic peas. But running through Brenda Williams's story is a riot of numerical coincidences, some turning on the curious fact that if you take various multiples of nine (18, 27, 36, 45 etc.) and add up the digits (1+8, 2+7, 3+6, 4+5), you always get nine back again. This is the kind of hidden pattern that children delight in discovering. And if some of the artsier parents fail to get it, they'll at least smile at Sophie Fatus's illustrations, which have a little of Marc Chagall in them, and a little of Joan Miro.' - Jim Holt, The New York Times This is the first non-rhyming children's story that Brenda has had published, and it's a real treasure of a book. It offers a fresh slant on the well-known traditional tale 'The Princess and the Pea' - and young readers will love getting involved with the story and trying some mathemagical counting along the way. - Scholastic Literacy Plus Complimented by the bright imaginative illustrations by Fatus, this is an excellent way to introduce counting and numeracy skills. Overall, it is a nice story with fun, bold illustrations and should captivate any young listener. - Elizabeth Baskeyfield, The School Librarian
