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The Cloak of Stars by Judith Raymond-Penney with illustrations by Bruce Potter

There was once a beautiful princess named Marika, with skin the colour of honey and hair that rippled in a waterfall to her waist. The little princess was a happy child full of fun and mischief, and with a mind of her own.

When it came time for her to marry, she came up with an unusual, perplexing and seemingly impossible task for them to complete. Is there any prince that can find the answer and therefore be the one for her?

On the face of it, this has all the makings of a story my daughter would love, with a princess choosing her suitor from handsome princes, wonderful gifts and moral that shows that being married is not about wealth but finding someone that can make you happy and that you can connect with.

Unfortunately though, I didn’t like it. What ruins the story for me is that it seems to combine different cultures and places into the same story possibly in an attempt to give New Zealand children a story they can relate to more but which to me is done in a way that doesn’t seem to work. It combines the exoticness of palaces, arranged marriages and princes from foreign lands with gifts of greenstone/ pounamu, paua and a feather cloak which would seem distinctly from New Zealand.

The illustrations unfortunately don’t help raise my opinions of the book, while the princess is described as very beautiful, she is illustrated looking quite normal and even not like most girls would imagine a princess to look like. The father of the girl looks like he could be from the sub-continent, a prince who gave a gift of a greenstone pendant looks like a roman gladiator, and the one who dived for paua looks very European.

RRP $19.99
Published and distributed by Penguin Group under the Picture Puffin title
 

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