for reading aloud. Quindlen adds a lively entry to the popular 1990s genre of feminist fractured fairy tales. I rescued myself! It's a magic baseball mitt that transforms fourth-grader Kate into a princess in a medieval castle. Then the tomboy discovers she is supposed to spend her time watching from windows, sewing tapestries, and listening to the prince sing boring love songs. Instead, Kate slits her long skirt, helps slay the dragon, teaches the witch and the troll to play jacks and tic-tack toe, and sets up a baseball game between the maids and the ladies-in-waiting. Much of the fun is in the contemporary parody of the age of chivalry (Princess, schmincess--in baseball, effort is what counts), and Stevenson's line-and-watercolor illustrations combine the laid-back, the silly, and the wild. (Reviewed February 1, 1997)

In this short, breezy fantasy Kate's wish to be a fairy-tale princess is granted, but she finds that playing baseball and solving her own problems are much more satisfying than sitting around in a dress being pampered. Comic scenes, illustrated with Stevenson's agile black-and-white sketches, imagine how an athletic, strong-minded, modern-day damsel might react in classic fairy-tale situations.

Quindlen (for adults, One True Thing, 1994, etc.) bows with this literary confection slightly reminiscent of Jay Williams's feminist fairy tales. Kate, a star Little League shortstop, makes a wish to be a princess, unaware that the baseball glove she wishes on is magic. She abruptly finds herself dressed in uncomfortable clothes, sitting in the top room of a stone tower as men in metal suits clash outside. After wounding the ego of an inept prince by helping him vanquish a Black Knight and a dragon, Kate befriends a lonely witch, makes her way to the local castle to teach the serving maids and ladies-in-waiting how to play ball, then wishes herself back home. As a jock with a fondness for fairy tales, Kate makes a refreshing protagonist, but she is more affected by homesickness than by the creatures and situations she encounters. The other characters are cardboard, especially the men, who are either stuffy or clueless. Some amusing twists don't conceal the tale's essential thinness. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 7-9)"