Dealing with Dragons (1990)

There are few things in life that bring joy like reading a long-loved book to your child and watching them giggle at all the places you giggled, hiss at the annoying princes, and exclaim with delight at the surprises.

Thank you Pat Wrede for writing a book that was both a joy to read for myself, and a joy to share with my daughter. ( )

Oh, I like a story that starts by dissing your typical princess, and moves right on to a spunky, intelligent heroine, who happens to be disadvantaged by her birth. Princess Cimorene would rather be eaten by dragons than marry an eligible prince, so to the dragons she goes when threatened by this horrible fate. Fresh, funny and self-respecting, and a main character with an organizational bent – love it! ( )

I found this book shortly after I'd moved to Massachusetts. My family was driving down to Pennsylvania to see our extended family and we stopped somewhere along the way for lunch at a restaurant/diner (where, by the way, I had my first heavenly tuna melt sandwich (none of this open-face nonsense that they do in NYC) on pumpernickel) and the basement was absolutely stuffed, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, narrow corridors between shelves, with used books for sale. I have no idea how I managed to find this one among everything else, or how I managed to limit myself to one book, given the prices, but somehow I did...and this was one of those serendipitous jewels of a story that surprised me with how much I enjoyed it.

Cimorene is a genre-savvy youngest princess who finds her life incredibly boring. She'd rather learn fencing, cooking, Latin, and magic, than protocol, dancing, manners, and embroidery. When she learns that her family are planning to marry her off, she decides to run away, following the advice of a talking frog (who picked up a few things from the princes he'd met) straight into a cave full of dragons...where she presents herself as a willing princess. The dragon Kazul, amused by her pluck and enticed by her ability to make cherries jubilee, takes her on to cook, clean and rearrange the treasury, and organize the library.

Adventures large and small ensue as Cimorene learns how to navigate dragon society, deflects unwanted knights determined to rescue her, tolerates and befriends other dragons' princesses, and works with Kazul to uncover a dastardly wizard plot. There are cat-loving witches, stone princes who ought to have known better, jinns reluctant to implement curses, and dragons allergic to wizard staffs; there are dragon feasts and feats of strength, magic spells and potions, enchanted forests, and practical applications of wishes, soapy water, and magic feathers. Cimorene's level-headedness and sensibility shock and impress, and even the more princess-y things she had to learn come in handy.

Dealing with Dragons is a fast-paced adventure full of humor, clever nods to fairy tales, imaginative use of tropes, and casually placed women of power. Appropriate for kids but also likely to delight high schoolers and adults. Highly recommended.

Quotes

p 97) An example of Cimerone's genre-savviness. I feel like these days authors would have her lift the spell, but where's the fun in that?
Cimorene felt better knowing that the princes would someday be freed, though she had sense enough not to try doing it herself. Since she had not been sent on a quest for the Water of Healing, it was highly unlikely that she would be able to disenchant the princess even if she succeeded in taking the water. And she knew enough about quests and enchantments and the obtaining of things with magical properties to know that she would probably get into a lot of trouble if she tried.

p 166) "Tokoz drank Turkish coffee every morning. The stuff is strong enough to take the roof off your mouth. That's why no one ever went to talk to him over breakfast." ... Cimorene tried to imagine coffee, even Turkish coffee, strong enough to take the roof off a dragon's mouth and failed.
This bit tickled me because my mother-in-law drinks something pretty much equivalent...at least three times a day. ( )

Cimorene is certainly not your average princess... and aren't the readers of this book glad! The literary world needs girls like her to combat the sighing, namby-pambyness of Bella. ( )

A tomboy princess flees her kingdom and becomes a dragon's assistant, but her magical problems are just beginning.