Princess Prunella and The Purple Peanut

by Margaret Atwood, Maryann Kovalski (Illustrator)

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Genres: Picture Books, Childrens, Fiction, Fantasy, Canada, Fairy Tales, Canadian Literature

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 9, 1995

About the author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth ­ in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.

Reviews

[Laura]

Hilarious, and tricky to read aloud... so much fun!

[Kristin Thomas]

Summaries: "Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut" is all about Prunella. Prunella is a princess that is unhappily spoiled. Through this book, readers see a fairy tale that entails a classic message. Prunella lives in a pink palace with her parents, three cats, and her Pug. She loves herself, and later on, she wants to marry a rich prince. From this classic message comes a story with tongue-twisting energy that has plenty of different turns.


Evaluation: I rated this book a five. I love how this book is very light and whimsical. It is fun to read and full of bright colors! It is a great way to keep students engaged with reading and the topic of learning alliteration.

Teaching Idea: This book could be used to introduce and/or review alliterations.

[Regine]

I remember reading this years ago, and I couldn't remember the name of it. Okay, I usually really dislike Atwood, but I loved how light and whimsical this read was. Really fun to read out loud too.

[William John Wither]

The alliteration is inspired, but the moral feels insipid.

[Cathy]

Ah! I remember this one! I bought it for our children's room when it first came out rejoicing that I could read one of my favorite authors to some of my favorite kids. Wrong! This Prunella et al will work delightfully with upper elementary and maybe even middle school, all of whom understand vanity and self-absorption and who are quite gifted at telling others what to do, but boy it sure didn't work for a room full of wigglers. Still, I am glad I re-read it a moment ago. It is good fun to read aloud. PS The cats are the best part.

[Garance J. Bonadonna (The Nerdy Artivist)]

A cute little story although I would have liked the ending to be slightly more developed and maybe a bit more actual (meaning more feminist).
The writing was amusing. I would recommend the parents to take their time reading it, to play with the words and explain the vast vocabulary used.
It was fun but just as A Trio of Tolerable Tales, I think the writing gets more important than the story itself and that's a bit of a shame.
Otherwise pretty good.

[Pamela Powell]

This delightful picture book uses alliteration to great effect, with multiple "p"s in every sentence. There is a wonderful moral to the story about thinking of others more than ourselves, but the true treasure in this book is the vocabulary. I read it with both 5th and 6th graders, challenging them to write down unfamiliar words as we read. At the end we discussed the myriad of new words. I even learned a new one- pendulous!!

[Erin]

A tale of a pompous princess “Prunella”, this book tells the story of how a person can’t be truly beautiful unless they have beauty on the inside. While the story was fun to read to the children, many of the words were at a level beyond what they knew. Overall the book was a diversion for Atwood who usually writes adult novels.

[Ash]

Basically a Scrooge retelling but with lots of words starting with P to create tongue twisters for kids….my mother liked to make me read tongue twister stories as a kid so she could laugh at my struggles which made me look at this book fondly, even if the descriptions were a bit too detailed and tangential for a children’s book

[April]

A children's book by Margaret Atwood?! This is a perfectly wonderful picture book about pompous, pretty, and petty Princess Prunella. Atwood introduces the reader to a variety of words, and uses fun "P" alliteration.

[Zoe Roberts]

I thought this book was very cute and would definitely be interesting for kids. I think the illustrations will be intriguing to children, but the overall plot of the story and the dialogue is a little disappointing for its potential.

[Ange]

This has a fun idea behind it with all the letter P alliteration but it's overdone at the expense of the story. It feels a bit forced and although the illustrations are good, they don't always match with the text, for instance the pin-headed prince is anything but pin-headed.

[Edwin Macharia]

For some odd reason this book is quite interesting even at my age.

[Pammi]

Margaret Atwood is a genius!
Her children's books are also outstanding!!!

[MultimediaProject_2020]

It reminded to me instagram influencers. A perfect observation and combination of past, present and future.

[Angela]

Both children and adults will appreciate this lighthearted book creatively told with alliteration.

[Aubrie Nichole]

A perfect children's book from the Great Margaret Attwood. A tongue twister that was such a fun find.

[Amara]

Prunella?! Why not Pirlipat? Much better name for a snotty princess. :) #nutcrackeraddict

I liked this one better than the others in this "series".

[Holly]

Clever alliteration!

[Susan]

This was just handed to me because I said Margaret Atwood is not cheerful enough for me.

[Danielle]

3.5 stars

[Katherine]

Making our way through her books, but not our favorite.

[Erik Akre]

Someone needed to write a full-length children's picture book of alliterative prose! This story doesn't let up on the /p/ sounds through the entire book, except for the appearances of the wrinkly wristed Wise Woman, who briefly and mysteriously introduces the /w/. It might sound annoying, but it's really a lot of fun once you fully enter the sound of the story. It ends up being a joy to read aloud to children. (The story itself is the standard 'mean-person-learns-to-be-nice,' but this book is about poetry more than plot, and its very worth it for that.)

Witness these examples, and then imagine an entire book written this way:
..................
"Princess Prunella was proud, prissy, and pretty, and unhappily very spoiled. She would never pick up her playthings, plump her pillows, or put away her pens, pencils and puzzles."
..................
"The petrified puff-pig plopped down, and Prunella scooped up Pug, whose pulse was pounding and who was panting with panic, patted him, and fed him a peppermint."

It's all for fun. I imagine Atwood collecting /p/ words and phrases over the course of a year, then composing a piece that somehow fits them all in. Somehow /p/ appears in places that are probably pretty practical in their placement, i.e. she had to fit them in somehow, even if the sense of it was wonky. It's all for poetry, and all for fun. Enjoy!

[Angie]

My dear aunt and I were discussing Margaret Atwood novels and she recommended this book as a treat for Molly and I to read together. I ordered the book immediately... and finally just read it to Molly (age 7) and Toby (age 9) tonight, about a year after getting my hands on it. Talk about procrastination. In any case, the book was super fun to read aloud! Packed with p-word alliteration, it's a tongue-twister of sorts, but fun fun fun to read out loud! The illustrations are great (but my kids were distracted and hugely entertained in a rather inappropriate way by the inclusion of what we can only assume was a cat's anus... don't ask...) and the vocabulary was challenging but fun. The story was simplistic and not terribly unique (spoiled princess gets cursed for not helping a poor woman, has to do good deeds to reverse the curse), but it was told in a fun way so I enjoyed it :)

[April (The Steadfast Reader)]

Gah! This book! First confession: I did not read this to the three year old girl. I read it to myself. I suppose it was cute and whimsical and could be useful in teaching alliteration to small-ish children but I can only guess what a nightmare this would be to read aloud. Admittedly, there is some fantastic vocabulary in it (there has to be, one must get creative if they're going to find enough P words to fill up an entire story.) But it's also LONG for a picture book. I'm going to pass on reading The Girl this one.

Also: typical princess fare - I would have expected more from Atwood.

[Wendy]

I heard this book at a youth activity several years ago, but I couldn't remember the title. I've thought about it off an on since. By pure accident I found it at the library last week. It is the book I remembered from the activity. It is full of alliteration (mostly letter P) and has a good, if somewhat predictable, moral. I'm just pleased to be able to know the title and record it should I ever want to read it again. :)

[Kelly Fulcher]

The Princess and the Purple Peanut tells a story about the pitfalls of pride. The princess has a very high opinion of herself, and an old women puts a spell on her that makes her nose a purple peanut. This is a good book to use to teach children about being too stuck up or looking down on others. I didn't really enjoy this story line either, so I suppose this tells me that postmodern stories are not my type.

[Alirogers7]

What a great way to teach alliterations to children. This spoiled princess not only uses alliterations to describe everything around her, she also uses great vocabulary that will have students captivated. Aside from the obvious language lesson, this book also teaches the importance of thinking of others and not just about yourself.

[Siskiyou-Suzy]

I know its not what's going on here, but this book has a /r/IAmVerySmart vibe, precisely because of the awkward way the words are used. I know it's because this is a book filled with alliteration -- there's a point to it all, I know. But it still reads awkwardly, like somebody who got hit in the head with a thesaurus and couldn't use natural-sounding language from that point on.

[Dianna]

I found this book fairly annoying: although there was a good story here, it seemed to be more about the alliteration, and I got awfully tired of the letter P by the end of this book. It would be great to teach about alliteration and consonance though.