The princesses’ battles are expressed in illustrations spread over two pages with fanciful names for battle moves, the last of three always beginning with “twinkle twinkle little” in a superhero-comic-like fashion. Friendships are becoming more and more important to the series. Teamwork more and more often is saving the day. Princess Magnolia/the Princess in Black moves from working solo to fight the monsters coming through the hole into Monster Land in the goat pasture to inspiring Duff the Goat Boy to become the Goat Avenger, to inspiring Princess Sneezewort to become the Princess in Blankets, until in this most recent story there are 12 masked princesses and their pets in costume and the Goat Avenger too, working together to stop a giant from squashing a village in Princess Magnolia’s kingdom. I appreciate the arc that this series seems to be taking. There is often repetition of structure as when “Frimplepants had been a whisker away from a nap” ( PIB8, 5) and Fur Suit later “had been a tail hair away from a nap” ( PIB8, 40). Hale plays with the words in a way that West, possibly somewhat hindered by her longer format, does not. I do find Shannon Hale’s sentences and style superior to Tracey West’s. But they did work stunningly well when I was already tired as has finally happened a few times in the final weeks of December. I did not find that these had the length or scope to distract my worried mind and let me find sleep. I easily-too easily, really-finished a book of The Princess in Black in a night. I read the first in late November when I was a little more than midway through Dragon Masters, and read the 8 th of the series at the end of December, not really returning to the series in earnest until after I’d finished Dragon Masters. These books are far shorter, and they are stories with less arc and less danger than the Dragon Masters. The Princess in Black didn’t capture me in the same way that did Dragon Masters. Oops, so I read another full beginning reader series as I battled insomnia.

The princess in black 8