A Little Princess

Well-written, interesting, and teaches great morals. The main character exhibits great strength of character and is a worthy role-model for children and adults alike. The story was well organized and not dry in the least. I loved it!

This book is truly a gem of a story. In depiction of perseverance, joy in the midst of trials, and kindness to all, this book is a page-turner and and a beautiful story.

If you’ve read this story, you know it’s about a little girl with a very mature nature who loves to pretend, and this helps her through the biggest trials of her young life. This version is a beautiful hard cover book, with a ribbon bookmark.

The Good and the Beautiful rewrites the books they publish in “clean language versions,” which is good for some words… but ruins the story in this case. Sure, it’s positive that they remove the word “stupid” and replace it with better defined adjectives (such as unintelligent, witless). This version also removes the word “magic.” That’s a little iffy in this story… how else can a logically thinking child explain that their dingy attic room is completely transformed and food is left every time they leave the room, when everyone with the means to do such things in the house constantly punishes and hates the child? Sara’s imaginative play of dolls doing things when the people leave the room has been removed in only some parts of the book. All references to “fairy tale” are turned into “fairy story,” and Sara often refers to herself living in a “fairy tale” or being a “fairy tale princess” instead of the original (an example, “to think I used to pretend and pretend and wish there were fairies!” changes to “…wish I were a fairy tale princess!”) I get it, there’s a big anti-magic crowd who wants with this. But it would be nice to know before buying, because “fairy tale” and “magic” are NOT dirty words and have no reason to be changed for reason of “clean language.” Complete paragraphs are missing because of this editing.

The other edits in this book have gone too far. There are complete sentences and paragraphs missing, such as “took friendly hold of a piece of her hair” when she comforts the freezing monkey, “nourishing, comforting food” is changed to “nourishing, comfortable food” which makes no sense. “A dark face peeped into the attic” changes to “A dark face peered into the attic.” “Something nice and friendly…” removes “nice and.”

There is a big frenzy over Dr. Seuss’s and Roald Dahl’s books being changed because a group of people today don’t like the wording these authors from the past used. That argument isn’t over “clean language,” but it’s the same issue here. The book has been changed in a way the author didn’t intend the story to be told, and removes some of the meaning of the story. Much of the changes seem to be according to the new publisher’s whims and popular (though illogical) ideas rampant today. Some of the changes don’t make sense at all and seem to be random edits TGTB chose to make. I now question what edits have been done to every other book we have purchased form the TGTB library, as it is clearly more than just “clean language” changes being made.