A prince travels the world to find a suitable princess to marry - but none of the girls he meets seems right, and he cannot be sure any is a real princess. And so he returns home sadly. But then one stormy night there is a knock at the door and in comes a girl dressed in rags. She claims she is Princess Phoebe, looking for a prince she can marry. The prince is soon fascinated by her, so the queen devises a plan - she will place a single pea underneath the many mattresses on Phoebe's bed. In the morning, Phoebe complains of not having slept a wink. The queen is overjoyed - if the girl has felt the pea under all those layers she must be a real princess!
There are 24 pages in this book. This book was published 2005 by Oxford University Press .
Ian Beck is widely published and titles for other publishers include Lost in the Snow, Lost on the Beach, and Home Before Dark.
This book contains the following story:
The Princess and the Pea
A prince travelled the world to find a real princess to be his bride, but none of them would quite do. One night during a massive storm a girl knocked on the door claiming to be a princess from down the road looking for shelter. The queen was sceptical so placed a pea under the mattress of the spare bed. Then she piled more and more mattresses onto the bed so that it was so high the girl needed a ladder to climb into bed. Only a real princess will feel the pea under that many mattresses thought the queen. The next morning the queen asked the girl how she had slept and she complained bitterly about a hard lump in the bed. The queen was delighted and presented the girl to the prince. This is a real princess, she said. The prince was delighted and the two got married and lived happily ever after.
