Vivian Vande Velde

A Hidden Magic

Original cover art by Trina Schart Hyman

Ages: 12 and up

Publisher: Originally published by Crown/paperback by Harcourt

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Book Description:

Lost in a magic forest and needing to rescue an enchanted prince, Princess Jennifer seeks help from a kindly young sorcerer.

Where do you GET those ideas?

A Hidden Magic was the first book I wrote.  I knew that I wanted to write a fairy tale kind of story because I've always enjoyed fairy tales. 

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When I was growing up, I loved the Disney movies Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.  (They're still among my favorites.)  But I always wondered why the princess in those stories was always perfect.  I mean, except for the color of their hair, you could use the same words to describe each of them:  beautiful, kind, always knew what to say, knew how to sing and dance, was a friend to the forest creatures, and then she got into some trouble and needed a brave and handsome prince to come along and rescue her.  (How come they never had a bad hair day?  Why didn't any of them wear glasses like I do?  And didn't they ever move their hands a lot while they were talking--the way I do--and knock over a glass of water onto the lap of somebody important?)  And the prince in those stories never had any personality: handsome and brave--that was all there was to them.  (Except for the style of the drawing, you wouldn't be able to tell which prince went with which princess.) 

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So I decided I wanted to write a book where I would have a lot of the fairy tale conventions (princes and princesses, castles, magical creatures), but where the characters would be different from what people might normally expect.  That's why I have things like the magic mirror calling the prince a jerk.