The Princess Diaries

Just imagine. One September morning you wake up, biggest freshman freak of Albert Einstein High School, five foot nine, flat-chested, and gifted (except in Algebra). By week's end, you've learned that you are the princess of Genovia and begin tortuous princess lessons with your Grandmere, the Queen. The potential for trauma is enormous! Every girl in America is likely familiar with the premise in a much-altered form as the storyline of the Disney feature film, starring Anne Hathaway, narrator of this splendid audiobook. However, in this reading, Hathaway shines in a way that the scanty screenplay didn't allow. As Cabot's Mia Thermopolis, she is smart, she is sassy, and she is the victim of a cruel universe, a girl who nevertheless manages to shine with a wry adolescent wit and abiding incredulity. Hathaway's charming impudence and high energy will thoroughly engage listeners from middle school through adulthood. T.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

July 9, 2001
Youthful actress Hathaway, who stars in the forthcoming (Aug. 3) Disney film version of Cabot's novel, reprises her role as the reluctant royal Mia Thermopolis on this perky audio adaptation. Hathaway convincingly voices every nuance of exasperation, humiliation and anxiety that Mia feels as a gangly, flat-chested high-school freshman facing some king-size changes in her life. Mia thinks things can't get much worse when her artist mother starts dating her algebra teacher. But her "normal" days as a stressed student are numbered when she learns that her father is the prince of a small European principality called Genovia and she is not only a princess, but is next in line for the throne. Soon, the whole school—and all of Manhattan—know about Mia's title, something her never-married parents had agreed to keep from her. She's faced with taking princess lessons from her authoritarian grandmother, putting up with a bodyguard and fighting off paparazzi and false friends. Contemporary phrasing and slang—and Hathaway's comfortable mastery of both—give this recording a kick that's sure to capture a teen audience. Ages 12-up. (June)FYI:A sequel,
Princess in the Spotlight, was released simultaneously as a HarperCollins hardcover and a Listening Library audiobook, also read by Hathaway, on July 1.

July 2, 2001
A teenager living in modern-day Greenwich Village in New York City discovers that she is now the heir apparent to the throne in a European country, in this novel, soon to be a motion picture starring Julie Andrews. Ages 12-up.