You guys. You need to stop what you're doing this instant and go pick up a copy of Not Quite Snow White by Ashley Franklin and Ebony Glenn. It is stellar. It is more than stellar. It is just. so. good. Please. Run to your nearest bookstore or library and grab this book immediately. Not Quite Snow White follows Tameika, an acting and singing sensation who dreams of playing a princess one day. But when the other kids think she might be too tall, too chubby, and too brown, Tameika must learn that she is "just enough of all the right stuff." The book has such a timely and perfect message in a world where kids need to know now more than ever that they are perfect just the way they are. And anyone can be a princess. My girls ate this one up. We read it multiple times a day. We played princesses and talked about the things that make us special. And we talked a whole lot about kindness and love.
For this book, we obviously needed to do a princess activity. We could have easily run to the dollar store to grab some cheap crowns, and they would have worked great. But we're always in the mood for an art project. And any time I can fit reading, art, and imagination into one day, I love it! So we decided to make tiaras and crowns.
Click the images below to download the printables you'll need for this week. Just download, print on a heavy cardstock, cut out, decorate, and glue together (in the case of the crown), or add some elastic (for the tiaras). We printed some tiaras on colored cardstock and some on white so that we could color them ourselves. We added some fancy sequin stickers we had on hand, and had a great time!
Now for some fun imaginative play ideas:
- Take turns being the queen/king/ruler and come up with new laws. (My four year old decreed that Peter Piper Pizza shall have gluten free pizza--she has celiac disease).
- Talk about what it is that makes a princess (kindness, love, etc. rather than body type etc.), and play princess.
- Have princess play. My girls loved performing like Tameika and being "Just enough of all the right stuff."
In all, this was a fantastic picture book. I hope you will all pick up a copy and know that you, too, are "just enough of all the right stuff."