These days it doesn’t seem such a radical story at all, but that’s only because we’ve seen it before. He represents that smarmy man we all recognise, who turns out - as Smartypants discovers - to be a right toad. He allowed me to read it to him one time, because there were animals in it, but since it had a plot and human characters, it was not a favorite of his. This hilarious picture book has a subversive protagonist and a strong message about choosing your own destiny. Princess Smartypants has been born into a life with a rigid path; she must marry into royalty (and produce heirs).

When the other princes heard what happened to Prince Smartypants, on of them wanted to marry the princess . Commanded by her parents to find herself a husband, the Princess sets tasks for her horde of suitors. She worked on such children's programmes as Bagpuss (working with Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin) and Jackanory for BBC television. Then we reach the ending of the book, which appeals to my feminist nature and provokes all sorts of discussion about the children’s own families: Princess Smartypants doesn’t get married, but she does live happily ever after in a truly modern fairy tale.My seven year old girls had to reprimand me for my treatment of books as I was hurling this across the floor.

I would recommend that the suitable age range for this book is early Key Stage One because the book is easy to read as there are only two sentences per page. This hilarious picture book with its wonderfully subversive protagonist sends a strong message to young readers about the importance being in control of one’s own destiny. I also believe it helps in guided reading because it includes elements of inferring, therefore reading between the lines and help develop in a pupil’s mind the implicit meaning of the book. Content that she has seen off all potential husbands, Princess Smartypants is extremely irritated when Prince Swashbuckle arrives and successfully accomplishes each task with swagger.This much is left unsaid; instead, Princess Smartypants is required to kiss him (following her own rules of the game) but he turns into a frog, in an inversion of the Princess And The Frog fairytale.

When the princes fail to turn up, the Princess sets off with her best friend, Eric the Anihilator, to find and rescue the missing princes. She has a little-girl English voice, sometimes little-girl clothes, lives on a boat for half the year and is altogether entertaining and eccentric. Babette Cole, the illustrator and author of more than 150 witty, imaginative, irreverent and sometimes controversial picture books for children, has died aged 66, after a short illness that led to a collapsed lung.Even though, most parents would think that her actions are somewhat vulgar to an extent, Princess Smartypants was only doing activities that satisfied her and that she was only trying to protect her state of being independent when Prince Swashbuckle passed all her tests. I am not a big fan of the end and how she turned the prince into a frog to get rid of any suitor that wants to marry her. This [narrative] isn’t just saying that women don’t have to marry, it’s saying that women can humiliate men, force them to work, then don’t marry them. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent.

She also designed greetings cards and illustrated stories by authors such as Joan Tate and Annabel Farjeon, before she produced her own first picture book, Basil Brush of the Yard (1977). 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. All of the potential husbands fail miserably as the gleeful Princess looks on — until Prince Swashbuckle appears. Princess Smartypants has been talked about quite a bit by children’s literature critics, though I personally feel it’s not as successful as it looks at first glance.

and the overall disrespectful, non-familial attitudes to the man-hating, lying, deal breaking princess this book was feminist rubbish from top to bottom. Deciding that parents needed help in talking about the facts of life to children, Babette became passionate about creating books that would be useful.