Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
Copyright
About the Book
Miss Mallow has decided to put on a musical show to celebrate the opening of the new school hall. Poppy and her class are all very excited, especially when they get to vote on which show to perform. But things start to go wrong during the auditions. Before long Miss Mallow is at the end of her tether and cancels the show . . .
Find out whether the show does go on and whether Poppy gets to be a fairytale princess in this exciting new story.
Princess Poppy
Fairytale Princess
written by Janey Louise Jones
Illustrated by Samantha Chaffey
Especially for Amelie Primrose,
a little fairy princess
Chapter One
POPPY THOUGHT THAT her teacher, Miss Mallow, was absolutely brilliant. She was so kind and she was always thinking up ways to make her lessons really interesting and fun. Poppy especially loved Monday mornings because every week they had what Miss Mallow called “circle time”. This was when each and every one of the children was given an opportunity to share something that was special to them with the rest of the class. It was called “circle time” because Miss Mallow made them put their chairs in a big circle in the middle of the classroom so that they could all see everything that was being shown. Poppy nearly always brought in something.
One Monday, she was especially pleased with what she had brought – it was one of her most treasured possessions and she couldn’t wait to show it. When Miss Mallow announced that it was circle time, everyone moved their chairs into position and then she went round the class asking each child if they had anything to share. By the time she came to Poppy, Poppy was almost bursting with excitement! She reached into her school bag, pulled out her special item and held it up for everyone to see.
“I got this from my grandpa. It’s a book of fairytales and Grandpa told me that it is over a hundred years old! It belonged to Grandpa’s granny, who was my great-great-granny Mellow!”
“That is lovely!” exclaimed Miss Mallow. “A true piece of history. In fact, it might be useful today. You see, I have something to share with all of you too.”
“Maybe she’s getting married to Prince Charming!” whispered Poppy to her best friend, Honey. But that was not Miss Mallow’s news.
“Children, as you know, builders are working on the school hall at the moment and it is due to be ready in eight weeks,” began Miss Mallow. “The stage will be redesigned with new lighting and scenery, there will be new flooring, the roof is being fixed so there will be no more leaks, and we’ll have some lovely new chairs and curtains. The Headmistress has invited a special guest to reopen the hall. However, I think we should do something to make the reopening even more special so I’ve decided that we will put on our very own musical show! What do you think?”
“Yeah!” chorused the whole class.
“Yes, Poppy, what is it?” asked Miss Mallow, noticing that Poppy’s hand had gone up as soon as she’d told everyone about her plan.
“Um, who is the special guest? And which show are we going to do?”
“Well, I was actually just coming to both things,” smiled Miss Mallow, thinking how impatient and inquisitive Poppy was. “The guest is Bryony Snow, editor of top fashion magazine – Buttons and Bows. We need to impress Ms Snow – if she likes the show she is going to do a feature on it in the magazine, but most importantly we must put on a fabulous event for everyone in the village who has helped us to raise so much money for the hall.”
All the girls in the class interrupted Miss Mallow with a huge cheer – Buttons and Bows was their favourite magazine, even though it was for grown-ups.
“But what is the show?” called out Tom impatiently.
“Well,” continued Miss Mallow, “I’m going to write it myself but the words and songs will be based on a well-known story. You all know lots of stories so I thought it might be fun if you helped me to choose. You tell me your ideas and I’ll write them on the board. Poppy’s lovely storybook might give you some inspiration.”
Every single child started calling out their favourites before Miss Mallow had even finished speaking – she could hardly keep up with them!
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” called out one girl.
“Annie!” yelled another.
“Sleeping Beauty,” suggested Lola, peering over to look in Poppy’s book.
“Treasure Island!” shouted Charlie, to a loud cheer from the other boys.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” said Helena.
“Cinderella!” cried Poppy, looking wistfully at the exquisite pictures in Great-Great-Granny Mellow’s fairytale book.
“Yeah, Cinderella!” agreed several other girls. “We love Cinderella.”
“Peter Pan!” yelled Ollie.
“Enough!” gasped Miss Mallow. “My wrist is quite numb. We’ve got plenty to choose from now. I suggest you all copy down this list and have a good think about it overnight. Then tomorrow we can put it to a vote. The story with the most votes is the show that we will do.”
At break, Poppy, Honey, Sweetpea, Mimosa and Abi formed a huddle in the playground – they were desperate to talk about the show.
“Which story are you going to vote for?” asked Poppy.
“Cinderella!” replied the other four girls in unison – each imagining themselves in a starring role and dressed as a fairytale princess.
Chapter Two
THE NEXT MORNING there was a buzz of excitement among the children because it was time to vote for their favourite show. The previous evening Miss Mallow had cut up pieces of paper for them to use as voting slips. As she handed one out to each child, she explained how the voting process worked.
“Write down the name of one story only, your favourite, then fold your voting slip very neatly in half and place it in the box on my desk. There’s no need to write your name on the slip. Voting should always be secret. Does everyone understand?” she asked.
“Yes, miss!” chorused the class.
Before long everyone had placed their folded slip in the shoebox. Miss Mallow cleared the top of her desk and started to unfold the pieces of paper in order to count the votes, but when she looked at them, her face fell.
“Oh, dear! Some of you have written down more than one story. That’s not the idea at all. It has to be just your favourite. I can’t count these as proper votes.”
A few people blushed. They hadn’t been listening when Miss Mallow was explaining what to do. Poppy and Honey were annoyed as they were impatient to know which story would win – it was always the same few people who didn’t listen and spoiled things.
Miss Mallow asked everyone to stop chatting. “We’ll have to do it all over again!” she sighed. “Luckily I made extra voting slips. Now, everyone, look at the board and I will tell you once more what to do.”
Finally they all managed to cast their votes successfully.
“I’ll lock these votes in my desk drawer for now and take them out after break,” said Miss Mallow. “At the beginning of our next lesson I’ll count them in front of you. Then we’ll have a result and I can be writing the show in time for you to start rehearsals. Now go out and play!”
Poppy and her friends couldn’t concentrate on their usual break-
time activities like hopscotch or cat’s cradle – they were desperate to know what the show would be. They all just sat on the wall with their milk and biscuits, wishing break would end so they could hear the results.
When they went back into class and settled at their desks, Miss Mallow greeted them with one of her warm smiles.
“Please take out your Reading for Fun books and read quietly while I count the votes,” she said as she started to sort the slips into separate piles – one for each show.
When she had done this, she counted the number of slips in each pile, eagerly watched by the whole class – none of them could concentrate on the reading task she had set them.
At last Miss Mallow looked up.
“Put down your books – we have a result!”
Everyone was dying to hear but they were so excited they were being very noisy.
“I won’t announce anything until you settle down!” said their teacher.
Everyone fell silent immediately.
“The shows with the most votes,” began Miss Mallow, “are Treasure Island and Cinderella.”
Some children cheered and others booed, disappointed that their favourite was not in the top two. Again Miss Mallow had to ask everyone to calm down.
“It is extremely close: there is only one vote between these two!” she told them. “And the winner is . . . Cinderella!”
There was lots of cheering and whooping, but also some booing, mainly from the boys, as they thought Cinderella was too girlie to be any fun.
“Miss Mallow,” said Charlie, putting up his hand, “Harvey is ill today and he told me he was definitely going to vote for Treasure Island, so that would have been a draw!”
Before Miss Mallow could reply, Mimosa piped up. “Miss,” she said, “Lola is ill today too, and she was going to vote for Cinderella, I know she was, so it would still have won!”
“Class, settle down immediately!” said Miss Mallow firmly. “We simply will not be able to carry on with this if you won’t accept the result of the vote. I’m in charge and I cannot take into account people who are not here. Cinderella has won fair and square so that is the show we’ll be doing. I won’t hear another word about it. Please take out your rough jotters and put the date in the margin and write a heading: Sentences.”
Everyone usually groaned when Miss Mallow said this, but this time they did as she said, in silence. They could tell that she was annoyed and they didn’t want to be properly told off. Miss Mallow was the best teacher in the world and hardly ever got cross, but when she did, it was very serious indeed.
Miss Mallow spent her whole lunch hour noting down ideas for the show. She was very excited about it – she had never done anything like this before. She really hoped that the children would have fun and that the Headmistress, Mrs Milkthistle – as well as the school governors – would be impressed with it.
Towards the end of the day, Miss Mallow spoke to the class about the show.
“Please listen carefully,” she began. “Now that we have chosen our show, we need to start rehearsing. The first rehearsal will be a week on Friday, straight after school, and it will take the form of auditions for each part.”
“What are auditions?” asked Tom.
“It’s when you act out a little bit of one character’s lines to see if you are good at being that character,” explained Miss Mallow. “I will give you a script and a character list before that so you can decide which parts to try out for. Remember, if you’d rather help backstage or play an instrument in the orchestra, that’s a very important part of any show. Not everybody likes acting. Now, please take these permission letters home to your parents and bring back the signed reply slips before next Friday. We will be rehearsing every Friday for six weeks, and on the seventh week we’ll do our performance of the show.”
When Poppy saw Mum at the school gates, she ran towards her and handed her the permission letter.
“And the auditions are next Friday, Mum!” she told her. “I really, really hope I’m Cinderella. She’s my favourite ever fairytale princess!”
“Well, Poppy, you’re certainly a natural actress! But we’ll just have to wait and see,” said Mum.
Poppy lay in bed that night gazing at her great-great-granny’s book of fairytales and fell asleep dreaming of a fairy godmother waving a wand and giving her the role of Cinderella.
Chapter Three
THE NEXT DAY Miss Mallow told her class all about the history of the story of Cinderella. This was one of the reasons why Poppy thought she was such a brilliant teacher. Poppy loved knowing lots of little details – they made things that might have been boring seem really interesting.
“Did you know,” began Miss Mallow, “that there are versions of this story from every corner of the world, all dating back hundreds of years? But the most popular version was written by Charles Perrault in 1697. He added more details to the traditional folktale – like the pumpkin, the Fairy Godmother and the glass slippers. In fact, at first he thought of fur slippers, but then he realized they would be too stretchy! Can anyone tell the class the story as we know it nowadays?”
Poppy’s hand shot straight up in the air. She knew this tale inside out and back to front. She had so often imagined how sad Cinderella must have felt at the start of the story and how happy at the end.
“Ok then, Princess Poppy?” smiled Miss Mallow. “Come out to the front and tell us the story of Cinderella!”
Poppy stood behind Miss Mallow’s desk, cleared her throat and began to tell the story. When she had finished, everyone clapped, amazed at how well Poppy knew it.
That week the children could think of nothing but the school show – even the boys were becoming quite enthusiastic about being on stage. Everyone was dying to see the new hall, which was strictly out of bounds while the builders were there. No one was allowed in until the week before the show, so the rehearsals were going to take place in the gym instead.
At the start of the following week, Miss Mallow handed a script and cast list to each child in her class.
“Here we have the script for the Rosehip School musical version of Cinderella, and a cast list for auditions too. Please study these before Friday and come to the rehearsal with an idea of which parts you would like to try out for,” she said.
The whole class pored over the list.
“Oh, I hope I’m picked to be Cinderella!” said Poppy. “There aren’t really any other parts I like!”
“Me too,” said Sweetpea.
“And me!” said Mimosa and Abigail at the same time.
“Well, I hope I’m the Fairy Godmother,” said Honey, who loved fairies above all else.
When the end of the week arrived and everyone had finally brought in their permission slips, Miss Mallow’s class stayed behind after school. They had a snack in the classroom and then made their way to the gym. Lots of the parents had offered to help with the show – much to Miss Mallow’s delight, as she was beginning to realize that it was going to involve a huge amount of work and there was no way she could do it alone. Mr Melody, Abi’s dad, had offered to be the musical director. Poppy’s cousin Saffron, who was also Miss Mallow’s best friend, promised that she would help with the costumes and Poppy’s mum had volunteered to make any hats or headpieces. Madame Angelwing, Poppy’s ballet teacher, was very kindly going to lend a hand with the dance routines. It was going to be a real team effort.
The children sat in a circle as Miss Mallow explained how the auditions would work. She wrote the names of each character on a card and told everyone who wanted to try out for that part to line up behind the card, but when she looked up, she saw that every single girl – except Honey – was standing behind the Cinderella card and every single boy was behind the Prince Charming one. She smiled.
“Oh, dear! I thought this might happen!” she said. “You do realize that we can only have one Cinderella and one Prince, don’t you? There are lots of other brilliant parts. Playing baddies and meanies like the Ugly Sisters and th
e Wicked Stepmother is often even more fun than playing princes and princesses. Those are the parts that everyone in the audience will really enjoy!”
But the children weren’t convinced and no one would audition for the parts of the Ugly Sisters or the Wicked Stepmother.
“Come on, class!” said Miss Mallow. “It’s too late to choose another show – and may I remind you that a majority of you did vote for Cinderella. You can’t all have thought you’d be Cinderella or Prince Charming!”
But she saw from the look on their faces that it was exactly what they had thought!
“Please will you have another think about it – otherwise we’re not going to get anywhere,” said Miss Mallow, despair creeping into her voice. “There are lots of other parts, plus all the important non-acting roles. Come on, children. You’ve got five minutes.”
Some of the boys moved around a bit and one, Tom Worthington, volunteered to be Cinderella’s father. Honey had already said that she would like to play the Fairy Godmother. Gradually other children began to move around and stand behind different cards. For most of the parts there was no need for an audition as only one child had put themselves forward. But for the parts of Cinderella and Prince Charming there was still a great deal of competition. Poppy and several other girls, all of whom wanted to be the star of the show, weren’t budging. There was no way they were going to give up the opportunity of being their all-time favourite fairytale princess that easily.
The girls formed a queue for trying out as Cinderella, each doing her absolute best when her moment came. Poppy was second last in the line, with just Abi behind her. As each of her friends made a brilliant job of their audition, she became more and more nervous. By the time it was her go, she was sick with nerves.
Ever since Miss Mallow had given out the scripts, Poppy had been trying to memorize the part of Cinderella. But now she was so nervous that she decided to use the script again – just in case.
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