Have you ever seen those memes where it jokes about it feeling like you’ve lost a friend when you finish a novel? Yeah… That’s what it felt like to finish A Little Princess.
As a 30 year old woman, you’d think a ‘kids book’ such as this would be a silly read for me… But honestly, it was probably one of the – or perhaps even the number 1 – best stories I have ever read.
A Short Back Story on My Reading Habits
When I became Christian, I came across this author – Elisabeth Elliot – who wrote with such poetic prose that every story she told was as if I could have been right there beside her experiencing the same thing, just through her eyes instead of my own.
After discovering her, it lead me to discovering Amy Carmichael, who happened to be a writer at the same time frame as Mrs. Elliot. Both authors were writing around 1900’s-2000’s. Reading these authors lead me to enjoying the writings of this time frame much more than I used to.
There’s something different about us humans these days: We really are getting dumber. The writing of that century vs. the writing these days is drastically different. We have dumbed things down and began using such crude and stupid jargon. But back in the day? Wow. The descriptions, the prose, the poetic flow of their elegant speech… Just wow.
If I could choose a time to have lived other than my own, I would choose between 1900-1960.
This enjoyment of the older prose led me to be quite excited when I cracked out my copy of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, especially when I found out it was published in 1905!
The Reason I Read A Little Princess
About a month ago, I was with my sister-in-law one day and we were reminiscing about books we read when we were kids and this book popped up for me… In fact, the reason it popped up is because I still have my copy from when I was 8 or 9 years old.
For the last couple of months I’ve been writing like you wouldn’t believe. Just story after story has been flowing out of me; many of which happen to be princess stories. So when that conversation popped up and I thought of the copy I believed I still owned, naturally I had to go and find it.
Digging deep into my closet, I fished out my copy of A Little Princess. It was as if I was 9 years old again. Happier than a kid in a candy store… Though, I’ve always felt that way about books in general.
Short Description of what A Little Princess is all about
This lovely book follows the life of a little girl named Sara Crewe. Her father was a rich man who brought her to live at a boarding school for young girls while he went away to war and then stayed away on a business opportunity. When she arrived she was treated as royalty because of her father’s wealth. But as the years passed, a tragedy happens and she loses her wealthy title.
The host of the school, Ms. Minchin is an evil old woman, who hated Sara the moment she met her. Which only proved true when she treats Sara maliciously right after the tragedy. Ms. Minchin took everything from her, sent her to live in the attic and made her become a child slave. She was barely seen as human in Ms. Minchin’s and the other workers’ eyes.
However, as the title of the book comes to light, Sara Crewe saw herself as a princess. It was a fun ‘game’ she used to play with herself when she was rich. But it became more than a game – it became reality – when she had to live in an attic and was treated worse than the rats in the walls.
She thought: “If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”
Amen to that. Amen to that, Sara Crewe.
What I Thought of A Little Princess
Honestly, it felt like I lost a friend the second I read the last word and closed the book for good. Truly, I had a broken heart in the way that only a great book can give you.
In the time it took to read this book – I went as slow as possible so as to enjoy and absorb as much as possible – Sara Crewe became my friend. Her character is one that any little girl would be blessed to have as a friend. I would be more than honoured to ever have the chance at meeting someone in real life that was like her, and I would be even more than blessed to have a daughter who one day would get the chance to enjoy Sara Crewe’s friendship through reading A Little Princess. (And then I will be there for her when she is inevitably heartbroken as well.)
So it goes unsaid that I very much enjoyed this book.
It helped me a lot with my own writing; in writing my own princess characters and especially in how my princesses speak. And it helped in my own life: in the way that I think, myself. I should like to be like Sara Crewe, a little princess; a blessed little princess indeed.
You Would Enjoy A Little Princess IF…
If you like older style writing and are able to get past the odd older version of words (a major example is the word ‘queer’ being used to just mean ‘weird’) then you would enjoy reading this book.
If you like stories that exemplify quality characters for yourself or your daughters, then you (and your daughters) would enjoy reading this book.
If you’re picky about the books you read and you dislike typical ‘popular books’, then you will enjoy reading this book.
A Little Shameless Advertising
AND, if you think you’ll enjoy A Little Princess, and you enjoy princess stories period, you should keep your eyes open for my to-be-released this year (2026) princess book set called ‘The Princess Chronicles’ by A. C. McGuire.
But for now, I do have 2 other Princess stories, however they’re geared towards younger readers as they’re short picture books.
Princess Hazel Loves To Read and Princess Sophia Loves To Pray
Check them out if you’re interested. (Sneak Peak Here) And if you’re not interested, I hope you at least enjoyed and took something from this book review blog of A Little Princess.