The Big Princess

In the tradition of folklore tales, a childless King and Queen find a tiny daughter nestling in a flower. But this adorable little creature is under a spell, which makes her grow at such an alarming rate that every bed the Queen makes for her becomes too small in a day. In no time at all the Princess is too big for the castle and to the despair of her parents she is forced to go to a tall tower. There, in the turret window, the King spies something shiny in the Princess’s belly button, and realises this could be the key to breaking the spell which threatens to destroy his kingdom, which of course, it is. Shrinking to normal size (though still tall), the Princess is reunited with her parents and the King plants the seed, which becomes a sea of beautiful tall flowers named by the people ‘Big Princesses’.

Both the story telling and the pictures have a simple Japanese imprint, full of bold coloured geometric shapes, which become the people and places of the pictures. Scattered through these graphic images, photoshop details of jewels, a man with a graph, a ruler and more, give a sharp, modern dimension.

This original slant on a folktale will enchant even the non-princess-loving readers amongst us.