Oftentimes young children are ridiculed and mocked if they have allergies to specific foods, pollens or animals that they do not understand. In Sue Ganz-Schmitt’s children’s story, The Princess and the Peanut, this topic is brought to the forefront in this fairy tale.

Unnumbered but around twenty pages, this over-sized paperback book has an illustration of a beautiful princess portrait against a maroon background on the front cover. The back jacket has four reviews along with a drawing of an allergy bracelet. The book is targeted toward preschool to elementary school aged children, especially those dealing with allergies, their symptoms and conditions. Illustrator Micah Chambers-Goldberg does an excellent job with the large creative, colorful and very extensive artworks on every page that includes the same maroon background color.

In this short tome, a young prince is tutored to capture dragons, joust for fun, and solve village squabbles, but he has no clue how to find a real princess. He looks high and low, finding ones that are busy, already taken, too hard to get or turned out to not be real but still he cannot find one true princess.

After the king and queen throw a ball where so many come to eat and dance, they all leave, yet still he does not find the love of his life. Later that same dark and rainy night, one wet, lonely and sad young maiden appears lost at the king’s gates. The queen and her maid dry her off, put her to bed, and, for some strange reason, put a peanut under her mattress.

Not knowing the maiden is allergic to peanuts, the next morning she awakes with puffiness, hives and swelling so a doctor is called and she is given needed medicine.  Learning that king and queen are allergic to other things such as cats and dust, the maiden rests and gets better. After her recovery, the prince notices her beauty; they fall in love, marry and live happily ever after as long as there are no peanuts or pine nuts in the castle.

Although two pages of illustrations of the maiden’s story of how she came to the castle have no wording so is somewhat confusing and there may be misconstrued scary demons in a few drawings, this is an easy-to-read lesson about skin sensitivities. With the last two pages explaining allergies, treatments and definitions, the book will lesson fears, educate and aid in helping young children understand how to overcome everyday allergies.

This book was furnished by the author for review purposes.

Follow Here To Purchase The Princess and the Peanut: A Royally Allergic Tale

Check Out Some Great Deals On Amazon.com