Little Princess book club

I’ll get to the Little Princess book club details in one moment, but first a story.

It’s interesting how movie adaptations of books affect our view of the books. At some point, and I honestly do not remember if it was before or after I read the book, but the Little Princess movie came out and it was set in World War 1. Fast forward a few decades and the kids and I are about to study World War 1, so I have us listen to the book, because you know it takes place during World War 1. I remember that from the movie, and I had a vague memory of that being true.

That was a complete and total lie. In reality, it’s set vaguely somewhere in the late Victorian or early Edwardian age, so right around the turn of the twentieth century. All that to say, our Little Princess book club was not quite the World War 1 study I thought it would be, but it was a fun book and a movie night.

Little Princess book and a movie

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The Little Princess

Little Princess book and a movie 7th 6th

Sara’s father has to go away, so he carefully puts her in the best boarding school. While Sara may be the richest girl in the school, she is also the kindest, treating the lowest servant with the same respect as the wealthy students. Her life is turned upside down when news comes of her father’s death. She is taken from her posh room and turned into a servant. Through it all Sara has the sweetest attitude, and it is this attitude that ultimately changes the students and teachers at the school.

(We read this before I started taking a picture of the kids reading the physical paper book, so instead you get the square version of my Little Princess book club picture, I’ll be remedying that later)

Little Princess movie night snacks

Little Princess book club snacks

I find this interesting, but apparently, we had almost no snacks for this movie night… So, I added in a few extras that make sense based off of some items mentioned in the book. This is also before we made snack labels, so I need to make that up and add them in to the subscriber freebie page.

tea cakes- I love these little cakes and they fit in perfectly with tea parties
cucumber sandwiches- white bread, cream cheese, cucumbers, with a bit of dill weed and garlic salt
strawberries- they talked about really wanting strawberries and I’m always up for buying strawberries
soup- once Sara is poor, she subsists on lots of not particularly good soups
bread- there’s this whole subplot about a bread shop, and getting bread
meat pie- another item that was incredibly decadent in the book, and I wish I’d thought of including this originally

We watched the BBC mini-series of the Little Princess. It’s a bit slow, and I really wish I’d watched the 90s Little Princess version.

Little Princess book club discussion questions

This is my absolute favorite scene from the movie. It’s super awesome, and it’s what I try to teach my kids. It’s interesting, how what you watch and read as a kid informs your opinions as an adult.

This gets to the heart of the book.

What makes a Princess?
Do your circumstances change who you are as a person?

Honestly, that was my big takeaway and discussion for the book, but thankfully there’s some great bloggers who came up with amazing Little Princess book club discussion questions.