The Princess Diaries

This is one of the few books you'll find that I'll read after I see the movie. I had never heard of this book before seeing the movie (although the cover did look a bit familiar). I even remember actually enjoying the soundtrack (“I'm supergirl!”) and according to Amazon.com, both the movie and book came out in 2001(?). That's odd, because usually there's some sort of downtime between the book year and the movie year.

Since I had already seen the movie (at least twice), I knew what I was getting myself into. Average girl finds out she's a princess.. yippie. The book is written in journal format in very “teenager-like” sentences. At first, the simple writing annoyed me, but eventually I learned to like it. The style of the main character Mia really grew on me, and her random sprouts of neurosis were definitely entertaining.

My friend in my high school year book class first mentioned this book to me, citing that the movie left out a lot of things - and she was right! But unlike most cases, I'm going to have to agree with Disney on what they cut out. They left out her mom's new algebra-teaching boyfriend and the dad and Tina character all together. But all three things, although they helped the story, were very extrenuous. They were all interesting points in her life, but as far as the princess plot went, they barely contributed. In fact, it took a few hundred page (500 total) for Mia to even realize she was supposed to be a princess. I can imagine someone who had never read the book before must be wondering, “when is this princess stuff going to go down?”

Disney took a much smarter route in what they left AND what they added. They left out all the aforementioned characters, because they really didn't help the story. They did, however, add more onto the second-romantic interest of Mia. Although, Michael may be touched on in any of the other 4 books (which I'm sure he is). The Disney movie also had something else the book did not - a conclusion! The movie wrapped up nicely and the book more so just ended. Eventually I'll read the other books, but I'm in no hurry.