Princesses Behaving Badly

Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History -- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings by Linda Rodriguez-McRobbie, 303 pages

Thanks to Disney's marketing machine and its effect on my preschool daughter, I have an abundance of sparkly princess costumes and movies in my house. So when I stumbled across Rodriguez-McRobbie's book in Overdrive, I knew I'd have to check it out. True to the title, the princesses profiled in this book are not sparkly or well-behaved; instead, they're rebels, madwomen, hard partiers, military leaders, pretenders, and even, in one case, a champion wrestler. I lost count of the number of princesses profiled, but there are dozens whose lives are described, not in minute detail, but in easily digestible overviews that show just how extraordinary these women were. My main beef with this book is the odd lack of organization, skipping backward and forward in time and theme. Perhaps part of that problem was exacerbated by that fact that I was listening to the audiobook, but it's something of which to be aware when reading this book. Which you should, because these are stories that need heard.