The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (Hero's Guide Series #1)

by Christopher Healy, Todd Harris (Illustrator)

Overview

Prince Liam. Prince Frederic. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav. You’ve never heard of them, have you? These are the princes who saved Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, respectively, and yet, thanks to those lousy bards who wrote the tales, you likely know them only as Prince Charming. But all of this is about to change.

Rejected by their princesses and cast out of their castles, the princes stumble upon an evil plot that could endanger each of their kingdoms. Now it’s up to them to triumph over their various shortcomings, take on trolls, bandits, dragons, witches, and other assorted terrors, and become the heroes no one ever thought they could be.

Christopher Healy’s Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is a completely original take on the world of fairy tales, the truth about what happens after “happily ever after.” It’s a must-have for middle grade readers who enjoy their fantasy adventures mixed with the humor of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Witty black-and-white drawings by Todd Harris add to the fun.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062117458
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/30/2013
Series:	Hero's Guide Series , #1
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	73,423
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	750L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Christopher Healy is the author of the acclaimed The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom—which won a place on several best of the year lists, including those of the New York Times, Amazon, and Kirkus Reviews—and its two sequels, The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle and The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw. The series is currently in film development with Fox Animation/Blue Sky Studios. He lives with his wife and children in New Jersey.

What People are Saying About This

Frank Cottrell Boyce

“This is the most fun you can have short of rounding up King Arthur’s knights, filling their armor with laughing gas, and driving them to a roller disco.”

Editorial Reviews

This is the most fun you can have short of rounding up King Arthur’s knights, filling their armor with laughing gas, and driving them to a roller disco.

Frank Cottrell Boyce

One of the more clever, hilariously successful incarnations of the current literary rage to rip apart and rewrite fairy tales… The princes in “The Hero’s Guide” may not be charming, but Healy’s romp of a book about them most certainly is.

Los Angeles Times

The premise is indeed charming…a quest that recalls at moments the Musketeers and at others, the Marxes.

New York Times Book Review

[A] lively, humorous adventure.

Wall Street Journal

Fairy tales take a zany twist in first-time novelist Christopher Healy's new book. The stories of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel are well-known, but, unfortunately for the princes' involved, no one even knows their names. The so-called "Princes Charming" (not Prince Charmings, because Charming is the adjective, of course), have found themselves taking a back seat in what was supposed to be their grand tale of heroics. Even after they get the girls, the princes soon lose them: Rapunzel decides healing is more enjoyable than living with the brutish and incompetent Prince Gustav, Cinderella needs more adventure in her life than the sheltered Frederic can offer, Prince Liam breaks it off with Briar Rose after she turns out to be plain unpleasant, and even Snow White and Duncan, two somewhat addled free spirits have their own marital difficulties. The princes end up on a quest to prove themselves—to themselves, their girlfriends, and their kingdom. Healy's novel is a rousing comic adventure, filled with an assortment of distinctive and original characters that will engage and delight young readers. Charmingly humorous illustrations peppered throughout the book add to the novel's sense of fun. Reviewer: Caitlin Marineau

Children's Literature - Caitlin Marineau

Gr 4–6—The premise in this debut novel is that the princes in the "Cinderella," "Snow White," "Rapunzel," and "Sleeping Beauty" stories resent their relative anonymity (they're all just known as "Prince Charming") and want some recognition. Then, too, that "happily ever after" thing isn't working for any of them, so the princes and their princesses set off to rectify matters. The eight of them team up in assorted permutations throughout the ensuing slapstick proceedings. Unfortunately, it all becomes tiresomely repetitive. Though it might be funny once for people to fall over and knock into other people who fall over… and over and over like dominoes, it stops being amusing pretty quickly. It's understandable that Healy's characters are broadly drawn. They are, after all, fairy-tale personae. But more than 400 pages of the obsessive-compulsive prince, the ridiculously macho prince, the overachieving prince, and the extremely stupid prince and their equally one-dimensional princesses are a lot to plow through, especially when things are left so unresolved that readers suspect a sequel is in the offing.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

Instead of finding Happily Ever After with their princesses, four Princes Charming (Prince Duncan insists they pluralize the noun, not adjective) must team up on a farcical quest to save their kingdoms. The bards have the story details wrong, and each Prince Charming that rescues a princess actually has a name. Bold, party-crashing Cinderella wants adventure more than sheltered Prince Frederic does. Prince Gustav's pride is still badly damaged from having needed Rapunzel's teary-eyed rescue. Through Sleeping Beauty, Prince Liam learns kissing someone out of enchanted sleep doesn't guarantee compatibility, much to the citizens of both kingdoms' ire. Although she loves wacky Prince Duncan, Snow White needs some solitude. The princes-in-turmoil unite to face ridiculous, dangerous obstacles and another figure underserved by bards' storytelling: Zaubera, the witch from Rapunzel's story. Angered at remaining nameless, she plots to become infamous enough through ever-escalating evil that bards will be forced to name her in their stories. The fairy-tale world is tongue-in-cheek but fleshed out, creating its own humor rather than relying on pop-culture references. In this debut, Healy juggles with pitch-perfect accuracy, rendering the princes as goobers with good hearts and individual strengths, keeping them distinct and believable. Inventive and hilarious, with laugh-out-loud moments on every page. (Fantasy. 8 & up)

Kirkus Reviews