Let Them Eat Princess and the Pea Cake

After perusing the traffic statistics for this blog, I was surprised to learn that one of the top three most visited entries so far has been The Princess and the Pea Craft.

Since August starts tomorrow and brings with it the decline of the summer school break for most kids and their parents, at least here in the states, I thought I'd offer up another fun Princess and the Pea activity: The Princess and the Pea Cake for the weekend. The link takes you to a recipe and crafting instructions.

The headboard could easily be adapted for children's creation, for example, using cardboard or even the kids' ubiquitous popsicle sticks instead. An appropriate-sized doll could be the princess. There's many ways to make this cake a simpler but still fun project if your decorating skills are inexperienced at best. See this one if you feel inadequate because it's charming but realistic for the usual at home baker. (And don't worry, Cake Wrecks only features professional cakes, not ones made at home!) I love the idea of using a green M&M for the pea, so don't forget that fun detail!

And, of course, I had to do a quick search of Princess and the Pea cakes and found this wonderful one by SevenCakes.com which appeals not only for its quality but in that the princess actually appears to be having a sleepless night. So many illustrations and otherwise forget that the fairy tale is about not being able to sleep on the pea! And if you look closely at the bottom right hand corner, you'll see a pea pod with a pea missing. And a crown hanging on the bedpost. There's also more detailed photos of the cake on the main site. Love, love, love it! My favorite of all I've seen.



There's lots more cakes on the web, such as here and here and here (a black princess!), but for the sake of time and space, I'll refrain from sharing them all. Just remember that search engines are your friends if you want to see more and discover that many minutes have evaporated while looking at cakes.

By the way, the entry about the Nail Polish Giveaway has been the most popular so far for obvious reasons. The first bottle will be given away a week from today!

Bluebeard: A Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition

Just received this press release:


Guide traces murderous husband Bluebeard’s many appearances in English

Bluebeard is the main character in one of the grisliest and most enduring fairy tales of all time. As the story goes, a new bride is left alone by her husband and given free reign of their house, save for one room that she is forbidden from entering. Almost immediately she gives in to her curiosity, discovering a bloody chamber holding the corpses of his previous wives. Upon his return, the husband is enraged and attempts to murder her as well. Astonishingly, the tale of Bluebeard and his many wives was a nursery staple, one of the tales translated into English from Charles Perrault’s French Mother Goose Tales.

Bluebeard: A Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition (University Press of Mississippi) is the first major study of the English tale and its many variants. The book presents examples of English true-crime figures, male and female, who have had the label Bluebeard bestowed upon them, from Henry Tudor to the present; rare chapbooks and their illustrations; and the English transformation of Bluebeard into a scimitar-wielding Turkish tyrant in the massively influential melodramatic spectacle of 1798.

Casie E. Hermansson also details the impact of the nineteenth-century translations into English of the German fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and the particularly English story of how Bluebeard came to be known as a pirate.

The authors and artists who have engaged with this story comprise a “who’s who” that is three centuries long. Bluebeard: A Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition will provide readers and scholars an invaluable and thorough grasp on the many strands of this tale over centuries of telling.

Casie E. Hermansson is an associate professor of English at Pittsburg State University. Author of Reading Feminist Intertextuality through Bluebeard Stories, she has also published in the University of Toronto Quarterly, Papers on Language and Literature, Studies in American Fiction, and the International Journal of the Humanities.

Not sure exactly how it compares to Maria Tatar's Secrets Beyond the Door, but it's wonderful to see more scholarship for Bluebeard being published. I imagine this will be a great resource for professors and students especially.

Poetry Break

And today for your reading pleasure, a gem often mislooked on the SurLaLune main site. Oh, there are so many treasures to be found there, many I've forgotten myself in ten years. (And there's many more I never have enough time to add either....)


The Coup de Grace
by Edward Rowland Sill
(1841–87)


Just at that moment the Wolf,
Shag jaws and slavering grin,
Steps from the property wood.
O, what a gorge, what a gulf
Opens to gobble her in,
Little Red Riding Hood!

O, what a face full of fangs!
Eyes like saucers at least
Roll to seduce and beguile.
Miss, with her dimples and bangs,
Thinks him a handsome beast;
Flashes the Riding Hood Smile;

Stands her ground like a queen,
Velvet red of the rose
Framing each little milk-tooth,
Pink tongue peeping between.
Then, wider than anyone knows,
Opens her minikin mouth,

Swallows up Wolf in a trice;
Tail going down gives a flick,
Caught as she closes her jaws.
Bows, all sugar and spice.
O, what a lady-like trick!
O, what a round of applause!

from An American Anthology, 1787–1900 (1900).

Princess and the Pea Games

So what is it about The Princess and the Pea that inspires the creation of board games? Unless they are Disney related, no other tale has a board game resume like Princess and the Pea, not even Cinderella. At least not that I've discovered...

So, yes, there are TWO board games for children inspired directly by Princess and the Pea, quite different and I'm not sure which one is more fun. I don't own and haven't played either, but the reviews are overall favorable for both, although they are most recommended for the under five-years-old set. I just know I would have adored the games as a child and am still charmed by them decades later.


The first, Princess and the Pea Board Game, is more of a traditional board game where you add mattresses to your own bed as you move along the board.

Just like Hans Christian Anderson's beloved fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea," the prince is searching for a real princess. In this game you move your bed along the board adding mattresses to it as you go. To win you need to build the highest bed and reach the special "crown" space! Are you the real princess?

The second game, Sleepy Princess and the Pea, appears to be more of a variation on Jenga where all players build the one bed with mattresses and try not to let it topple over.

Is she really a princess? the queen asks herself as she makes a tricky challenge to test the damsel. You are the queen's eager helpers and you must prepare the bed for the little princess. You have to be careful and skillful as the queen wants her to sleep on a wobbly pile of mattresses. Together you try to help the princess with the stacking of the mattresses. This game includes 2 fairy tale games of skill for 2 - 4 players ages 3-12 with the fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea" a story to read again and again.

So both games have used the same theme but differently. Both are also well-reviewed and recommended by parenting groups. Note that neither are Disney princess games either. Impressive.

The Enchanted Screen: A History of Fairy Tales on Film by Jack David Zipes

We have an abundance of fairy tale related films (Shrek 4, Rapunzel, Beastly follow this December's Princess and the Frog) coming out in 2010 so it's fitting that this book will be released in January 2010:

The Enchanted Screen: A History of Fairy Tales on Film by Jack David Zipes

I discovered this upcoming title last week which has almost no information available yet. There's not even a cover image available on Amazon or the Routledge site. (Yes, I find that more times than not, Amazon has the image before the publisher does on their respective sites.) However, just the title makes me hope it will be added to most university libraries for all the students out there who write on this topic.

Alas, Routledge doesn't tend to send out review copies and SurLaLune doesn't have the budget to acquire much of the expensive nonfiction and review it. However, I will keep my eyes open for extended information on the title to help encourage the library requests, at least. I'm sure this will be of interest to the many students writing about Disney and beyond, many of whom come seeking information on the SurLaLune Discussion board. Official sources like these are a blessing, but only if the university libraries add them to their collections.