The Birthday ball

Bored, bored, bored. It’s all Princess Patricia Priscilla can think as her sixteenth birthday approaches. It’s less than a week before the Birthday Ball, where she will choose her husband from a group of unappealing suitors.

Boring.

But things around the kingdom get pretty interesting when Princess Patricia Priscilla disguises herself as a peasant and starts attending the village school. She may not be spending her days in the comfort of the castle, clothed in silk, but at least life in the village is fun. It doesn’t hurt that the new schoolmaster is young and handsome.

In this tale of mistaken identity, creamed pigeons, and young love, the two-time Newbery Medal winner Lois Lowry compares princesses to peasants and finds them to be exactly the same in all the important ways.