Talking about A Little Princess
Questions for reading it as a family: openers to get everyone talking, real questions with no right answers, and something to do together. First time? Here's how we'd run a family book club →
Warming up
Easy openers. Anyone at the table can answer these, including the youngest.
Sara tells stories so vividly the other girls forget where they are. What story would you tell to make this room disappear?
If you lived in Sara's bare attic, what's the first thing you'd pretend it into?
The real conversation
Pick two or three, not all of them. A good conversation about one question beats getting through the list. Parents answer too, honestly.
Sara says being a princess has nothing to do with silk dresses. It's how you behave when everything is taken away. Miss Minchin never once understands what she means. Do you? Try to say it in your own words.
When Sara is rich, being kind is easy. The book takes away everything she has to find out what's underneath. What's the difference between being nice and being good?
Starving, Sara finds a coin, buys six buns, and gives five to a beggar girl who is hungrier. Is that too much? Where's the line between generous and unwise, and did she cross it?
Miss Minchin flatters Sara when she's rich and starves her when she's poor, and thinks of herself as a respectable woman the whole time. How do people convince themselves they're being fair when they're not?
Sara's pretending isn't running away from the attic. It's how she survives it. When is imagination a strength, and when would it tip into hiding?
The big one
Sara's rule is that she'll be a princess on the inside no matter what happens on the outside: courteous to the cruel, generous with nothing, unbeaten on the coldest night. What's your version of that rule, the thing you'd keep being on your worst day, when nobody would blame you for quitting it?
Do it together
Work the Magic
One night, while Sara sleeps, her attic is transformed (warm fire, hot supper, thick blankets) by someone who slips away unseen. She calls it the Magic. This week, each of you performs one piece of Magic for someone else in the house: something made better, secretly, with no credit taken. At the next book club, everyone guesses who did what. The best Magic, Sara would insist, is the kind that's never solved.
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More discussion guides: the family book club →