Last week I reviewed The Salamander Spell by E.D. Baker (spoiler alert: I loved it!!). So I immediately dove into the next Frog Princess book, The Dragon Princess. While The Salamander Spell follows Emma's aunt as a young girl, The Dragon Princess follows Emma's daughter, Millie. I love when authors write books like this. I love following children of main characters because there are always references to the adventures of the main characters and getting to spend time with those characters at a different point in their life is so fun for me. Well, let's get into it, shall we?
The Short Story:
As with all of the books so far in E.D. Baker's Frog Princess series, friendship and adventure abound in this book. There are silly characters as well as scary ones, strong relationships and good examples of friends and family ties. The writing is simple, yet still attention-grabbing. If you like magic and fairytales and good lessons, you should try this series.
The Long Story:
In this book, we follow Princess Millie, daughter of Emma and Eadric, who has a very interesting problem in her life. Most of the time, she is a princess, a young girl who has best friends and likes to learn and seeks adventure. However, when something upsets her (and, at her age, anger just happens sometimes... hormones, you know), she turns into a dragon. Yep. This is obviously an issue of convenience but especially an issue of secrecy and fear. People don't generally like dragons and Millie is the only child of Emma and Eadric, therefore their only heir. It doesn't help that Eadric's parents, Millie's grandparents, are wholeheartedly against magical things and creatures of any kind. Millie desperately wants a way to stop this change from happening or at least to gain control over it. With a temper like hers, who knows what can happen! So Millie and her friends set off to find a way to control her anger. And there is magic and craziness along the way.
Like I said in the short story, the writing in this series is so simple. This is a middle grade, and probably young middle grade at that, series, so the writing should not be flouncy and fancy. But it doesn't detract from the story. In fact, it makes it easier to follow and quick to read.
Millie is awesome. She is such a protective friend and a great mix of her parents. I love the way her dragon magic works: her mother spent too much time as a dragon when she was pregnant with Millie. Zoe is a great friend to Millie as well, and serves as a way to show Millie's compassion. Francis... oh, man, I love this guy. He's Millie's cousin and he is adorkable (note the "k", of course) and determined and encouraging and very sweet. I stinkin' love him. I also love that most "trios" in YA and middle grade are two boys and a girl, but in this book it is two girls and a boy. Just a weird thing I noticed and enjoyed!
Overall: magic, great friends, DRAGONS (I cannot resist a dragon book), more magic, adventure, and self-discovery. Big fan.
5/5 stars.
What is your favorite magical creature to read about??
Happy reading!
