Here I am! I know that I said I wasn't going to post this week but my husband and I have been going through some of our storage recently and I found a little gem that I just can't help but share with you all.
It's a story book that I wrote, illustrated, and self-published when I was 11 years old. And let me tell you, it's so awesome. My husband read it to me as a bedtime story last night and I literally could not stop laughing.
I had an obsession with princesses as a kid. I am pretty sure I was a princess every Halloween clear up until the time I was about 20. All my favorite books were about princesses. I had a collection of princess stories that I read at least once a month until I was at least 16. So it just makes sense that I would have written a story about them.
This might take me a couple blog posts to cover, since apparently I was as long-winded as a kid as I am as an adult. I am preserving all spelling, grammar, punctuation, inhumane abuse of commas, and random capitalization as it is in the book.
Just a few notes so that you can get the full effect: I did my best to make this book look legit. It is bound in a cereal box covered by an old wallpaper sample with tulips all over it in super nasty '90's colors. All the text is hand-written in my 11-year-old handwriting which at the time I sincerely believed was better than my teacher's handwriting (I remember bragging to my mom about this - "Mom, look, my handwriting is better than Mrs. C's!"). On the front cover in big letters written in dark green marker, it says "A FAIRY TALE" and then in smaller letters, off to the side, it says:
A WICKED WITCH
An Enchanting Princess.
A Handsome Prince.
Prepare for an adventure you'll never forget.
Then on the inside cover, it says
The Jessica Roberts
PUBLISHING CO.
And then on the corner in tiny handwriting it says
copyright
like that was going to give me some sort of legal protection? I guess I thought that people would be clamoring to plagiarize my magnum opus? That this was the most original work of literature ever created? No, no, and no. In fact I'm pretty sure it rips off just about every fairy tale story ever written.
On the first page is an illustration of a sunset (?) and on the opposite page is an illustration of a black-haired woman in a yellow dress, standing next to a rose and vase that are taller than she is. The writing says this:
Long ago and far away, there was, and still is, if I am not mistaken, a land so beautiful and so close to being perfect that whoever made it decided that it had to be secret (I loved princesses as a child but apparently commas were a close second). This land had but one fault (Nope. It has more. I checked). This fault was a young princess whose name was Briar Rose, named after her grandmother, Sleeping Beauty. Rose was very beautiful, but she was so nasty and mean and had such a bad dispossition that her father, the good King Calvin, finally had enough of her.
The princess was very beautiful, but nasty and mean (I really wanted to drive this point home).
The third page has an illustration of people at what is supposed to be a royal ball. Everyone has huge hair and huge skirts, and all the men are drawn with either pigtails or a pony tail. The opposite page has a drawing of a table full of food with Briar Rose's angry-looking legless torso rising out of a large stuffed turkey.
ONE DAY, AT a ball, the princess made her entrance, looking as beautiful as ever (you'll notice that throughout this book, basically Rose's only redeeming quality is that she's pretty). Then she found what the cooks had made for the banquet, and she stomped out of the room in a rage, all the while crushing the toes of the unfortunate people who were standing in her path.
The next page has an illustration of Rose slapping a very short, bald, flat-headed, beak-nosed, red-faced, fat man in breeches while a maid looks on in horror. Opposite that is an illustration of a well that looks a lot like the one in the Disney movie Snow White.
THE PRINCESS stomped her way to the kitchen and began slapping the fat old cook's face 'til it turned purple.
The cook began to beg, "Princess, stop, oh, stop!" but that made her even ANGRIER! She dipped his head into a pot of boiling water (Obviously Rose is a lunatic) and then brought it up. Then she let go of the poor man altogether. He began to stagger about the kitchen and out the door to get some cool water from the well.
HER FATHER, the king, was, of course, very angry with Rose and so he decided to punish her (not by pressing criminal charges, though). He would send her to a friend, a King, who lived on the other side of the earth in another secret kingdom. She would stay there until she could learn to control her temper.
THE WISE old King Calvin devised a plan to get her to his friend's kingdom. He talked to a magic carpet, and the magic carpet agreed to carry her there when she stepped on it.
EVERYTHING went as planned. The princess stepped inside her bedroom door and the king watched as the carpet wisked her out of the palace and into the night air. The King had also fastened a message to the carpet. It said:
(The next part is written in very curly letters)
MY FRIEND, King Frank,
I regret to inform you that my daughter has been so horribly behaved that I have come to my wity (I meant "wit's") end. I wish you better luck with her than I have had.
MANY SHANKS to YOU,
KING CALVIN
Also, why is KC wishing Frank "many shanks?" Psychopathy runs in the family, maybe.
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