Pineapple Princess

A “deeply, deeply misunderstood” child seeks agency and appellation in Hahn’s picture book debut. The volume’s pale-skinned narrator, who sports a yellow frock and a cloud of brown hair, firmly believes in both their own princesshood and the archly phrased idea that “princesses should do whatever they want. Especially at bedtime.” Watercolor vignettes show the purported royal wreaking domestic havoc—red crayon marks the length of the family’s walls, and a younger child appears on all fours, hitched up to the protagonist’s wagon. The addition of a pineapple crown to the narrator’s costume (the fruit’s top half dug out and perched on their head), successfully garners subjects—of the housefly variety. Though the group enjoys “picnics and concerts and royal hunts” (Pineapple Princess is shown happily cavorting with the mass of flies), the insects “make poor soldiers, worse cooks, and terrible handmaidens,” frustrations that result in a return to defiant form, and a title change, for the protagonist. Though the tongue-in-cheek lines can lean on telling over showing, deftly shadowed spreads, especially of Pineapple Princess’s penchant for elaborate, and sticky, tea parties, lend a deliciously insouciant chaos to this careful-what-you-wish telling. Ages 4–8. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)