The Goose Girl

The Goose Girl

By Shannon Hale

Bloomsbury, 2003. 383 pages. Fantasy.

ISBN: 9781582348438

Reading/Interest Level: Ages 11+

Curriculum ties: Working with animals

Booktalk Ideas: Royalty in disguise!: Bring a stuffed animal and explain to it your (Ani’s) frustrations about the way your life has been up till now.

Challenge Issues: N/A

Challenge Response: First Defense File

Reader’s Annotation:

When Princess Ani is sent to a different kingdom for an arranged marriage, her entourage turns on her and Ani escapes to the forest. Her former best friend takes her place and claims to be the princess, but there are other false identities surrounding her.

Plot Summary:

Princess Ani of Kildenree learns when she’s young that people are often blessed with one of three gifts: people-speaking (manipulating and persuading people to your way of thinking), animal-speaking (communicating with animals), and nature-speaking (communicating with certain natural elements). Ani’s mother, the Queen, had the gift of people-speaking which is very common and useful for monarchs.

When she’s fifteen, Ani learns that she’s been engaged without her knowledge to the prince in another kingdom. As she travels there with her entourage, Ani’s lady-in-waiting, Selia ,who has the gift of people-speaking and has convinced most of Ani’s guards to wrk with her, betrays her and tries to have her killed. Ani escapes into the forest and Selia with the help of Ani’s entourage, pretends to be the Princess.

When Ani finally finds people, she takes on a new identity and finds work tending geese in the new kingdom. However, Ani and Selia’s are not the only false identities floating around.

Critical Evaluation:

In terms of reading level, this is a pretty simple book. Though Ani is fifteen-years-old and the book may appeal to older teens, many of the issues that Ani faces are simplified and appropriate for younger audiences.

The closest thing to a magic system in this fantasy novel is the various abilities of people-speaking, animal-speaking, and nature speaking. Though nature speaking is described as communicating through animal sounds, Hale doesn’t use onomatopoeia, but rather italicizes the conversations Ani has with animals. The animals have clear thoughts on what I would expect them to think about.

I love the characters in the book, though for whatever reason I never felt an overpowering connection to them. As fifteen-year-olds are often very concerned about their image, when Ani worries about her place as princess and realizes that Selia would do a better job, “Her eyes lingered a moment on Selia, and she found herself thinking, She would be better at playing princess than I am. The thought stung,” it’s relatable because so many teens feel that their friends are better at certain things than they are.

About the Author:

New York Times best selling author Shannon Hale started writing books at age ten and never stopped, eventually earning an MFA in Creative Writing. After nineteen years of writing and dozens of rejections, she published The Goose Girl, the first in her award-winning Books of Bayern series. She has published fourteen books for young readers including the Newbery Honor winner Princess Academy and its two sequels, multiple award winner Book of a Thousand Days, superhero novel Dangerous, and the first three Ever After High novels.

Her books for the adult crowd include Austenland (now a major motion picture starring Keri Russell) and Midnight in Austenland. Shannon and her husband Dean Hale have collaborated on several projects such as Eisner nominee Rapunzel's Revenge and early chapter book The Princess in Black. They spend non-writing hours corralling their four young children near Salt Lake City, Utah.

-from Amazon.com author page-

Justification of Selection:

This is a good selection for low level readers, and it has won several awards. It’s a good, clean read with great characters from an author who has proven her popularity with a variety of other works.