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    Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics
    Unavailable
    Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics
    Unavailable
    Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics
    Ebook770 pages6 hours

    Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics

    By Jason Porath

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Blending the iconoclastic feminism of The Notorious RBG and the confident irreverence of Go the F**ck to Sleep, a brazen and empowering illustrated collection that celebrates inspirational badass women throughout history, based on the popular Tumblr blog.

    Well-behaved women seldom make history. Good thing these women are far from well behaved . . .

    Illustrated in a contemporary animation style, Rejected Princesses turns the ubiquitous "pretty pink princess" stereotype portrayed in movies, and on endless toys, books, and tutus on its head, paying homage instead to an awesome collection of strong, fierce, and yes, sometimes weird, women: warrior queens, soldiers, villains, spies, revolutionaries, and more who refused to behave and meekly accept their place.

    An entertaining mix of biography, imagery, and humor written in a fresh, young, and riotous voice, this thoroughly researched exploration salutes these awesome women drawn from both historical and fantastical realms, including real life, literature, mythology, and folklore. Each profile features an eye-catching image of both heroic and villainous women in command from across history and around the world, from a princess-cum-pirate in fifth century Denmark, to a rebel preacher in 1630s Boston, to a bloodthirsty Hungarian countess, and a former prostitute who commanded a fleet of more than 70,000 men on China’s seas.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9780062405388
    Unavailable
    Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics

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    Reviews for Rejected Princesses

    4.5/5

    77 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I fell in love with this book immediately, which has never happened to me before. I am not an early adopter, and it's the onus of every book to entice me. Of course, by the time I know that, I'm usually victim to time sink fallacy. But look at this cover. It looks like all the books in the old Disney movies. You know, like in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty where a live-action book opens at the beginning and closes at "the end". Now I have a book like that. I can look like I'm reading an old timey volume of forgotten lore (quoth the raven). Look at me -- I'm gushing and I haven't even opened the book yet.Inside is more than fifty stories of women who kicked ass and took names, folk tales you never heard of, tribal leaders, revolutionaries, women who outrode Paul Revere, outsmarted popes, outbattled kings, and outwitted empires. Each entry is about a page or two, so no princess outstays her welcome. They're like wikipedia entries, but don't duplicate the dry descriptions. Many include anecdotes and details that bring them to life as real people who existed. This is not a research/reference book. It's entertaining and informative like The Daily Show or CGPGrey or Extra Credits. The author adds a unique flavor/voice that gives away how much he loves this subject and how much he wants to share it.Plus, each entry has a beautiful illustration of the lady therein, rendered as a kind of Dreamworks/Disney princess. Like each woman has her own movie poster. It even includes notes on how the art includes culture and tidbits not in the story.Now this volume does have a fault: there are maturity ratings and content warnings for each story, ranging from one to five. But even the tamest wasn't appropriate for kids under ten (IMHO). In fact, just about all of them... well, this makes me sound like the most conservative of parents, but they acknowledge the existence of sex, use words like "plastered", and assume some historical knowledge. It's not that the content is vulgar or adult. It just brings up questions that I don't need to answers yet. Which makes it kind of strange that this book wants to highlight famous influential women, but the content is too old for when girls are their most influenced. Maybe they can release a PG version for the younglings? I want them to learn about these people too. The earlier the better.
    • 4/5
      I must say that I was following this on Tumblr before the author got a book deal. This is a great look at women throughout history and not just the few famous names you might have heard mentioned. I read the book to see if it was appropriate for my young nieces and I might hold off a bit since the book doesn’t shy away for rape and torture that happens to some of the women. The book does have a rating system with the stories set up on a maturity scale. The art depictions of each of the women do try and blend in themes and objects about their story in the picture. Overall this is a great book to give someone that likes history to be able to sample facts from around the world and various time frames. A good jumping off point to find out more about each of these women.


      Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
    • 5/5
      Absolutely stellar collection of stories of women who Did Things. I bought the sequel Tough Mothers but gave it away to a teacher friend because it was SO FULL of glorious education and beautiful art.
    • 5/5
      Like I mentioned in my previous review of Wonder Women, I love books that are compendiums of stories about different women who have done awe-inspiring things. The biggest selling point of this particular book for me is two fold:

      1. The author worked on my favorite animated movie – How to Train Your Dragon and helped bring one of my favorite characters, Astrid, to life! (the cake topper for my wedding was even Astrid & Hiccup!)
      2. He included Alfhild, a Viking princess turned pirate and the real life inspiration for the novel I’m writing!

      In Rejected Princesses, Porath includes women who are princesses and commoners alike, who hail from all over the world, from all walks of life, of all manner of life experiences. The illustrations of each “princess” are exquisitely designed to highlight their uniqueness and specialties. Porath also designed a rating system for all the women, but not the usual misogynistic rating of hotness, but of the type of life they led, more similar to a movie rating from G to R. In this manner, Porath has ensured that Rejected Princesses can be suitable to all ages and for younger children, parents can determine which stories to share with their children.

      So many of the women included would make terrific role models, especially given their diverse backgrounds, for any young woman, or man, and I absolutely cannot wait for a second volume! Porath continues to add new women to the Rejected Princesses‘ website and I hope that he will include them together in a a book just like with this volume!
    • 5/5
      As a former animator at Dreamworks, Porath once spent a lunch hour with co-workers brainstorming all the awesome historical and mythical women who were least likely to be made a Disney princess. Out of that session, Porath's brainchild of Rejected Princesses was born. Starting initially as a website, this book collects 100 brief articles on some truly awesome women from around the world. Most of the women are actual historical figures with a handful from myth, legend, and folktale. Porath summarizes their lives and includes delightful full-page illustrations for each. Note that while the illustrations are super child-friendly, the content here is more of a mixed bag. For example, some of the details on lynchings investigated by Ida B. Wells are tough for anyone to read. That said, I encountered tons of amazing historical women I had never heard of before and I'm planning to add a copy of the book to my personal collection as it's utterly delightful. Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This was my bedside reading/quick break between articles reading at the beginning of the year/during my first semester. I don't think I really read any other books, other than my textbook, at that time.

      So, so many cool women from history to learn about, and all of them just whet the appetite to learn more. Porath provides a robust bibliography with at least a few sources for each woman, so that you can go read more. I'll never have time to do it, considering how many women are in here, but it would be possible to, say, do a school report on some of these women by starting out with these sources. The pictures are cute, a lot of them kind of cheeky with the women smiling that manic pixie dream-princess smile even in the midst of chaos around them. They get a bit repetitive, since Porath was going for that generic Disney style, but background details make up for the style stagnation. Porath even includes fun notes flagging details in the pictures that didn't make it into the write up.

      It's been a long time since I read this, and while I do think the rating/warning system are brilliant, I did have a few occasions where I didn't quite agree (though that's probably inevitable). The best example I have is a level-1 story in which a woman instructs that the straw costumes being worn by a neighboring tribe (who are, admittedly, invading) should be set on fire. Yikes! That's not in the picture, but it still isn't very nice! Overall, the system is good, though, and a nice addition to a book that could easily be mistaken for a child-friendly book.

      Just a quick word of warning, I don't think this would make a good book for young children. Even if Porath does flag which stories would be appropriate for younger children, the format really doesn't lend itself to antsy little kids: there's just one big picture for each woman, accompanied by a page of text. Definitely more for older people to browse than it is for children.

      In lieu of a quote roundup, here are some of my favorite "princesses":

      > Khutulun (Mongolia)
      > Kurmanjan Datka (Kyrgyzstan)
      > Tin Hinan (Algeria)
      > Sayyida al-Hurra (Morocco)
      > Eustaquia de Souza and Ana Lezama de Urinza (Bolivia)
      > Mary Bowser (U.S.)
      > Josefina "Joey" Guerrero (Philippines)
      > Nana Asma'u (Nigeria [Sokoto Caliphate])
      > Julie "La Maupin" d'Aubigny (France)
      > Josephine Baker (U.S./France)
      > Anita Garibaldi (Brazil/Uruguay/Italy)
      > Joan of Arc (France)--though I mostly flagged this entry because of my interest in Yolande of Aragon, who I hadn't heard about before
      > The Night Witches (USSR)
    • 5/5
      From the dedication to the final entry, I felt things and enjoyed myself. I was, in fact, enjoying myself so much that multiple women asked me about the book mentioning specifically how much I seemed thrilled with what I was reading. There were so many women in here that I'd never heard of! My TBR has grown. And the women I did know, or thought I knew, all had new information listed on them. The author also acknowledged the complexities of history throughout and thoughtfully provided a guide for those who might be more sensitive to tales of violence, abuse, self-harm, etc. to go with each entry. Read this. It's magnificent. It shouldn't be your definitive source for history (no one thing really should), but it's a great platform to find out about some interesting and complex historical and mythical figures so that you can learn more about them.And for fuck's sake, read the Introduction first. Several of the few bad reviews are people complaining that the book is exactly what it said it was and not something else altogether. This isn't going to be your thing if you only want to read about good girls that are heroes. He's pretty clear about that.(And if that's your thing, I've no idea why you're following my reviews. They'll be worthless to you.)