An action-packed storytelling adventure that flips the traditional fairy tale on its head.
When it’s time for Jamie’s bedtime story, his dad begins to tell an age-old fairy tale about a prince in a faraway land full of dragons, wolves and princesses in distress. But inquisitive Jamie can’t help but add to his dad’s story, and the prince is soon joined by an evil-eyed witch who turns people to jelly, a broccoli-wielding ninja frog and a jewel-thief, lock picking princess. It may not be the story Dad set out to tell, but together, he and Jamie create something much more energetic and hilarious than they could have alone.
We're very excited to welcome Alastair Chisholm to talk about
The Prince and the Witch and the Thief and the Bears
As of this year, both of my daughters are teenagers (help!). But when
they were a bit smaller, I liked to try to tell them stories.
I say 'try', partly because making up proper stories
on the fly was harder than I'd realised, but mostly because trying to tell my
daughters anything was (and still is) nearly impossible. Like Jamie, the
central character in The Prince and the Witch and the Thief and the Bears,
they had Questions and Opinions.
"The Prince," I would begin, feeling
very pleased with myself, "lived in a far-off kingdom, where he— "
"How far off?"
"…What?"
The
Prince and his horse, illustrated by the fantastic Jez Tuya
How far off is the kingdom? they'd demand. How
fierce are the bears? How did the horse get down the cliff? Why is it even a
prince, why not a princess? Why was the witch so angry? Why is it always
stone that people get turned into – why can’t it be jelly? Can't the
horse help?
Things
the Witch has turned into Jelly
At first, the book was just about that – all the
questions and interruptions getting in the way of the story. (In fact, the
original title was The Interrupted Prince, and it included a scene where
they had to stop to look for Ollie the Sheep, plus a break in the middle
because Jamie needed a wee). But gradually, like the Dad, I started to
understand – the story was actually
better when Jamie told it.
The truth is, kids understand stories better
than grown-ups. Their world is made of stories, after all; it's how they
start to make sense of it all. (And if you're lucky, they'll keep that spark
for their whole lives).
And so … It turned out the kingdom was very
far off, and that became part of the tale. And the witch actually had a pretty
good reason to be angry, really. And hey, it should be the Princess who
saved the day – and of course the horse could help!
The
Princess takes charge
As Jamie and Dad discover, the best part of
telling stories to kids is telling stories with them, and the best part
of that is just listening as they tell you what the world is.
Also, the witch is a ninja and lives in a
castle made of broccoli. Just saying.
