Perfect Princesses

Guest: Shannon Hale, New York Times Best-selling Author  In the beginning of Shannon Hales’ young adult fiction book “Goose Girl,” the crown princess Ani’s attitude toward her royal duties is described this way: “\[She] wanted so badly to do it right, to be regal and clever and powerful. But too often her only truly happy moments were the bursts of freedom, stolen afternoons on her horse’s back, brief, breathtaking rides past the stables to where the gardens turned wild, her lungs stinging with the cold, her muscles trembling with the hard ride.”  In this book, and throughout her fiction, Hale plays with the concept of being a princess and whether or not the fairy tale is all it’s cracked up to be.