Princess Juniper of the Hourglass

Gr 3–6—Princess Juniper is always hurrying from comportment lessons to riding to training and class and never quite on time, according to her hourglass. Such is the life of the Princess of Torr. Juniper, however, wants a break this summer and makes it her task to convince her loving but extremely busy father to let her start her own practice kingdom with other children as her subjects. She recruits a guard's son, Erick, as her chief advisor; a baker's daughter, Alta, as her guard; and other children ready for a summer of adventure. Then suddenly the king wakes her in the middle of the night and sends the 13-year-old off with her small band of willing cohorts—all under the cover of darkness, with strange sounds of battle in the distance. Much to everyone's displeasure, the king's advisor sends along his sniveling son, Cyril, along with Cyril's two compatriots. The group heads to a secret valley, rich in land, sun, and water that they soon name the Queen's Basin. With hard work and direction from Juniper, they work without break to create a community complete with kitchen and bedroom caves. But all is not right with their homeland of Torr. An invasion has laid waste to the land, the king is captured, and worse, Juniper's lost control of her kingdom to Cyril and has been imprisoned. But Juniper is her father's child and she is driven, intelligent, and able to use her few loyal subjects. In the end, she realizes that she friends instead of subjects, and the motley crew might be able to save Torr. With elements from William Golding's The Lord of the Flies and Paul Fleischman's Westlandia (Candlewick, 1999), this story can be enjoyed by those who love princess stories and adventure tales. The characters are not necessarily realistic, but the plot carries the story along and leaves hints for a sequel.