SOPHIE the CIRCUS PRINCESS

Sophie tells a young friend the sad story of why she abandoned her career as a circus performer, but the story has an unexpected happy ending

Grade 1-4?The gentle story of a retired circus horseback rider, told by her young neighbor. Sophie was the star of the show when she married a handsome stranger who called himself the Prince of Pomerania. He turned out to be an imposter, however, and was imprisoned. Sophie then bought a small cottage and settled in to wait for him, "...chopping wood, fetching water, feeding her hens, and standing on her cow." Many years later, the prince comes back and finds Sophie older, but as beautiful as ever. They live happily ever after, she occasionally standing on her cow, he smoking his pipe and enjoying the garden, and the narrator grows up to be a famous painter of circus performers in America. Henstra's detailed, pale watercolor illustrations add just the right touch of whimsy and humor. Pictures and text are cleanly placed on the pages with lots of white space. A delightful, quiet romance, this Swedish import is a modern-day fairy tale with a twist.?Beth Tegart, Oneida City Schools, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When a boy befriends his grandfather's eccentric older neighbor, he discovers her astonishing secrets: she was once a circus performer ("the world's most beautiful horseback rider") and she had been wooed and won by a handsome Chicago gangster who passed himself off as "the Prince of Pomerania." While Sophie can no longer turn somersaults, her amazing claims are supported to some extent by her ability to balance herself on one leg, on the back of a cow. When a debonair stranger appears at Sophie's door one day, the youngster immediately recognizes him as "the false Prince of Pomerania" (returning at last from an extended prison sentence for also impersonating "a doge of Venice, a Romanian movie star, and a British stunt flier"). Henstra's stocky, occasionally cartoonish ink-and-watercolor illustrations impart a stylish whimsy to the outlandish plot; yet despite its humorous overtones, Claessen's text communicates a fondness for Sophie and her elegant suitor. Author and artist celebrate the bonds of an intergenerational friendship without undue sentiment, and with a healthy dollop of imagination. Ages 3-7.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 1^-3. The narrator, when he was a little boy, knew an old lady, Sophie, a former bareback acrobat, who sometimes stood on the back of her cow. Her eccentricities fascinate the boy, to whom she tells the story of her suitor, a supposed prince of Pomerania, whose heart is true even though the previous year he had claimed he was the doge of Venice. Freed from prison, he turns up for a happy reunion with Sophie. Exactly what children will make of Sophie's judgment in personal relationships is unclear, but the ink-and-watercolor illustrations of Sophie, in her decorous, long black dress and hat, carefully climbing up on the cow's back, are memorable. The prince, whatever his current delusion, is exuberantly charming. Sophie and her false prince have had (and still have) their adventures, and the pictures embody them glamorously. Mary Harris Veeder