Princess Smartypants

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Gloria Steinem wrote in her 1994 book Moving Beyond Words that she has ‘gained a lot of faith in reversals’ as a way of highlighting structural inequalities and prejudices: When we reach the part where the princess - who has some incredibly extreme hobbies - sets her potential husbands a series of tasks, we come up with ideas to help the poor princes who are keen to win Smartypants’ hand in marriage. We then compile these suggestions in a handbook called “How to Help a Prince”. The possibilities for activities are endless with this fabulous piece of fiction. I love hearing pupils’ ideas for how the princes could complete their crazy tasks - suggestions have included hiring a helicopter to feed the pets and drinking an energy drink before the roller disco. We also create freeze-frames of scenes from the story, take photos and write captions to go with them.

Lesson 3 - Introduce adjectives. Use ‘role on the wall’ to build vocabulary to describe the main character - focus on personality. Lesson 4 - Use vocabulary built over the week to write a character description, focusing on choosing interesting adjectives to create expanded noun phrases. This story is about an unconventional princess who doesn’t want to get married. She likes to spend time with her unusual pets and ride her motorbike. When suitors come to marry her she teaches all the princes a lesson by giving them horrible challenges to overcome so they run away. All except one prince who is very clever and passes all the challenges set by princess smartypants. She isn’t amused and teaches him an ultimate lesson. Princess Smartypants kisses the prince and he turns into a frog. Create a timetable showing the different things that Princess Smartypants might do at the start of the story.Design a new set of challenges for the princes who want to marry Princess Smartypants. Create a new illustration to accompany them in the book. The big struggle scenes comprise a large proportion of a picturebook, and sure enough the princes are put through a series of tasks which involve her scary pets or scary rides. What I liked about this story is that it was very unique and not conventional. It depicts a princess in a manner that is not common in pupils’ eyes. When children think of a princess they like to think about someone beautiful and graceful and kind, this princess is none of those things. Babette Cole has been very creative in using humour in this story, e.g. the names of the princes and the name of the princess.

Lesson 1 - Introduce the story. Discuss the title, cover, role of author/illustrator, etc. Make predictions throughout. Sequence the key events of the story as a class and then independently. Resources provided to record this in books. Challenge more able students to label their pictures with key words or sentences. Heroes in stories will set out to accomplish one of the following 10 things. Here, of course, we have a story about number five: This book seems to be telling girls that they would be better off without a husband and family. Definitely not the message I want to share with my little girls." (From a 1-star review).There are some lessons that you just can’t help repeating year after year; the reaction you receive from each class is so different and interesting that it makes you pull the old favourite out again and again. My must-do lesson focuses on Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole. Her most famous book is probably Princess Smartypants, a reimagining of the traditional fairytale in which the helpless princess is whisked off her feet by her prince charming. But in Babette Cole’s version, the princess is a fiercely independent woman who is pressured by her parents, the king and the queen, into finding a man. Her attitude is clear from the first line of the book: A four lesson unit of work based around the book Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole. A read through of this book can be found on YouTube if you don’t have a physical copy. The outcome by the end of a unit is a character description. The unit can be used to introduce adjectives. From the lowbrow names of "Prince Pelvis, Swimbladder, Boneshaker, Grovel etc. and the overall disrespectful, non-familial attitudes to the man-hating, lying, deal breaking princess this book was feminist rubbish from top to bottom." (From a 1-star review)