The Goose Girl (Shannon Hale)

Author Biography:

Shannon Hale is the Newbery Honor-winning author of Princess Academy, as well as the four Books of Bayern. She lives in South Jordan, Utah.


Published By: Bloomsbury U.S.A.




Year: 2003




ISBN-13: 978-1-58234-843-8




ISBN-10: 1-58234-843-X




Reading Level: Grades 9 and up




Reader’s Annotation:

While journeying toward her arranged marriage, Princess Anidori is betrayed, stripped of her title and reduced to servitude. But with courage, good friends and a hint of supernatural aid, she just might manage to reclaim her crown.

Plot Summary:

Princess Anidori-Kiladra of Kildenree has always failed at the airs and graces her status requires. Her true happiness is with animals: talking to birds with her adored aunt, or horseback riding with her kindly father. But both father and aunt die before her sixteenth birthday, upon which her stern, distant mother forcibly betroths her to the prince of Bayern. Then, on the journey to her new home, jealous lady-in-waiting Selia incites a mutiny against her.

After fleeing for her life, disguised as a peasant girl named Isi, Ani finds work attending the king’s geese – next to the very palace where Selia has usurped her identity. There she befriends other animal-keepers, learns about the peasantry’s hardscrabble lives, and begins to fall in love with (apparent) palace guard Geric. But treacherous Selia plans to manipulate the king into waging war on Kildenree. Can Ani find a way to save her homeland and restore herself to the throne?




Critical Evaluation:

In this winner of the Josette Frank Award, the Utah State Book Award (YA) and others, one of the Brothers Grimm’s lesser-known fairy-tales is retold with both intelligence and enchantment, ideal for young adult fantasy lovers. Hale expands the original tale to include swashbuckling action, sweet romance, intriguing mysticism, and rich poetry. Every sight, sound, taste, smell and sensation of life both in the royal palaces and in the animal-pens is vividly brought to life. Meanwhile, the fantasy world’s “magic” system, that everything on earth is sentient, has a language and responds to hearing it spoken, is so believable that the reader can almost imagine it existing in our world. Some plot elements border on cliché (e.g. a plain young heroine who struggles with being a proper lady; a prince and princess who fall in love without knowing each other’s identities), but Hale’s excellent writing and world building makes them work.

The character of Ani/Isi, socially awkward yet gifted with the rare ability to communicate with animals and the wind, reads almost as a fantasy version of an autistic savant. Readers who are similarly “different” will strongly identify with her. The heart of the book is her evolution from naïve, insecure and passive princess to wise, courageous heroine who takes her destiny into her own hands and gains the skills she needs to be a good queen. Her time as a goose girl, far from merely being the sad Cinderella circumstances of the original tale, gives her the space to cultivate her remarkable talents and brings her a new social conscience by teaching her how commoners live, as well as devoted peasant friends who prove invaluable in the final battle against the villains. The romance subplot is slightly underdeveloped, but still endearing, and thankfully takes second place to the heroine's personal coming-of-age journey. Any teenage lover of fairy-tales should enjoy following her.

Curriculum Ties:

•Fairy-tale retellings

•Fantasy worlds

Challenge Issues:

•Violence

•Cruelty to animals

Why This Book?

The Goose Girl is worthy to stand next to Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books, Robin McKinley’s Beauty and Damar duology, and T.A. Barron’s Merlin Saga as a classic of the contemporary YA fantasy genre.