The Princess and the Witch

Taking cues from Arthurian tales and folklore, Schimmel gives modern day readers heroines whose adventures earn them the right to live their own lives free of male--and royal--expectations.

Margaret, princess of Northumbria, wakes up one morning to find she has been changed into a dragon. She doesn’t know why or how, but she heard in a dream that her brother, now in a faraway land, must kiss her to break the spell.

But how can she tell him this? She can only screech and roar. Won’t he think he must kill the dragon to save her? Then she remembers a story her cousin told her.

And when Margaret is a princess again, will she be satisfied with the quiet life of the castle, or will she be off on a quest to save her brother from a mysterious illness? And will her dragon side help her or get her in trouble?

Nancy Schimmel started telling and reading stories to children as a summer camp counselor when she was in high school and college. After becoming a children’s librarian, she became a traveling storyteller, song-leader, and teacher of storytelling for children and adults. She was a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN. She wrote a how-to book, Just Enough to Make a Story: A Sourcebook for Storytelling. While on the road, she started to write songs, as her mother, Malvina Reynolds of ＂Little Boxes＂ fame, had done. Her 1992 album for children, All in This Together, won a Parents’ Choice Award, and another, Head First and Belly Down, was an American Library Association notable recording. She spent her tween and teen years in Long Beach, California, where she climbed the cliffs and rocks by the ocean. She now lives in Berkeley, California.