My first introduction to M. M. Kaye was in my teens, when my grandmother gave me her beautiful hardback copy of 'The Far Pavillions' and I couldn't put it down. Years later, on a secondhand book shelf in the shady back corner of a church I wondered into on holiday, I came across a tattered copy of her only book for children, 'The Ordinary Princess'. Needless to say, I snapped it up, and ever since my eldest daughter first read it, she has refused to let that copy out of her room! It is an utterly lovely read, a twist on the sleeping beauty story, where rather than being given the classic fairy gifts of beauty, charm, or golden curls, Princess Amethyst is given the gift of being ordinary. Her parents, the King and Queen, despair, for by the time she is old enough to be wed, no visiting prince will have her. Amy, however, has other ideas than marriage to a stuffy royal, and runs away to live in the forest, independent and free, among her friends the animals and the trees. She is kind, generous, thoughtful, fun-loving, and adventurous, with a strength of character lacking in her princess sisters, who, with all their external beauty, have little heart. Finding herself in need of a new dress, she determines to work to earn enough to buy one, and stumbles into a job as a kitchen maid in the palace over the border. It doesn't take long for the reader to suspect that she may end up making a royal marriage after all....but not at all in the way her parents had intended!

Amy is a super heroine, the story is gorgeously told, with language in keeping with a traditional fairytale and the inevitable happy ending equally traditional. Children will be left with the sense of joy of spending time in nature, of a love that is born of friendship first, and of the good that comes when we are true to ourselves and don't try to conform to the world around us and the expectations of others.