I am on a roll here with yet another childhood staple (and Newbery Honor winner) I missed when I was young. I’ll admit I skipped it because I thought it was yet another Cinderella adaptation. Those are everywhere! But I was wrong and I’m glad I finally did read this.

Hale’s wholly original tale takes place on Mount Eskel where the priests of Danland have divined that the prince will find his bride. Of course, Mount Eskel is the least likely place as its not even a province of the kingdom but a territory and none of the girls are noble born. In fact, many don’t even know how to read because they spend their time working in the quarries, picking up the valuable lider stones. So a princess academy is formed where twenty eligible young ladies are schooled in reading, writing, poise, diplomacy and all that so they could be the prince’s big pick.

Hale does a wonderful job building her world, especially the location of Mount Eskel with its strong mountain air and wide-open sky that goes on for miles. Each chapter opens with a bit of quarry-speech, a special ability only the mountain people know that allows them to speak through the lider stones, Furthermore, with the inclusion of the school, one can get the differences between Mount Eskel and the lowlanders (aka the rest of the kingdom) and the differences in culture.

Furthermore, Miri, the protagonist is a lovely girl to follow on this adventure. AS one of the smallest girls, looking younger than she is at fourteen, she stays home hearding the goats while her father and sister work in the quarry with the rest of the community. A fact that she pretends she is fine with.

There are a lot of things that Miri pretends she doesn’t care about. Like her best friend Peder may like another girl rather than her though she is unsure of her own burgeoning crush. She doesn’t care that she doesn’t work at the quarry though she secretly feels the others judge her and that her father thinks she’s weak. She doesn’t care when the other girls make fun of her as her score begins to rise at Princess Academy.

Miri is just very relatable. She can be goofy and makes jokes to break the tension. She wants to be special, she wants to be recognize and contribute to her community. She can also be prejudiced like when she constantly sees the lowlander Britta as haughty and condescending before she befriends her. But she is also kind and willing to stand up for what’s right and fair like helping her school rival and standing up to the teacher.

She’s also a seeker of knowledge as she experiments with how quarry-speech exactly works, reads up on commerce so to better the mountain people’s stock when haggling with traders and enthusiastically devouring new tales.

So really, Miri is just a great protagonist to follow along as she struggles to find her place in the world like at Princess Academy where she is given the chance to dream for the first time a world beyond Mount Eskel. Like her feelings for Peder, she is confused. She loves her home but being a princess could make her special, she could help her family, she could see more of the world. But she also loves her home, it’s part of her.

But Miri is also smart as she begins to absorb the lessons and also learns a bit more about the people around her like Britta who is not the stereotype of haughty lowlander everyone believed her to be. Even Katar, Miri’s rival gains layers as the book goes on but how so would be a spoiler. Same applies to the snooty teacher, Olanna which is satisfying to see most all the characters have some amount of depth to it.

In fact, maybe it’s because I just read Hale’s Real Friends trilogy which is based on her life but I can see a lot of Hale in Miri with the friend issues, feeling excluded and more young than others, making jokes to break tension, love of reading etc. But as they always say, write what you know.

I also enjoyed how Mount Eskel traditions and songs come into play in the last third of the book which transforms it from a coming of age, rags to riches story to an action-packed hostage situation.

Overall, a nice story that plays a bit on rags to riches tropes (although it does get a bit superfluous with the descriptive passages and similes) but also subverts them so everyone gets to where they belong.