Beauty is only skin deep

Character trumps looks in this charming fairy tale.

Jennifer Minicus | Aug 22 2016 | comment

The Girl in the Towerby Lisa Schroeder
written for ages 9-12 | recommended
published in 2016 | Henry Holt and Co. | 256 pages

Ten-year-old Violet has spent her entire life locked in a castle tower. Trapped there by a wicked queen, she and her mother, Nuri, have lived in a small room aided by two kindly servants. They pass the time imagining they are pirates on grand adventures, never losing hope that Violet's father will someday rescue them.

Unfortunately, Queen Bogdana has plans for the girl. In reality she is a witch, but cannot hide her ugliness. She needs the feather of a hummingbird and a strand of hair from an eleven-year-old girl with lavender eyes for her beauty spell. As Violet's birthday approaches, the queen knows her chance is near at hand. She decides to train Violet to be a princess, assuming that this new life of ease will appeal to the child. What she does not count on is the strength of Violet's love for her mother and her own freedom.

Lisa Schroeder's sweet fairy tale should appeal to young princess story lovers. While the writing and plot is relatively simple, the story's theme is significant. Too often modern culture places a high value on physical appearance. Violet is a refreshing heroine who thinks so little of her beauty that she is willing to sacrifice it for the people she loves.

A former teacher, Jennifer Minicus is currently a full-time wife and mother.

I've been reporting on LGBT issues for some time now at Conjugality, MercatorNet's blog on the future of marriage. I'm afraid that it's all a bit of a mystery to me -- how to explain this kind of orienttion, how it has been normalised, how it can attract so much public sympathy. But that's OK, because it turns out the experts don't really know a lot more than the rest of us.

“Sexual orientation and gender identity resist explanation by simple theories,” write psychiatrist Paul R. McHugh and epidemiologist Lawrence S. Mayer in a major new study in The New Atlantis. “There is a large gap between the certainty with which beliefs are held about these matters and what a sober assessment of the science reveals. In the face of this complexity and uncertainty, we need to be humble about what we know and do not know.”

The report is well worth reading for yourself, but we've summarised some of its major findings below.