Disney Princesses Celebrate Autumn in A Fairy-Tale Fall

Autumn is an exciting time of year, especially if you happen to live in a place with very distinct seasons. In Pennsylvania, it means thousands of leaves painting the countryside with crimson and gold before falling to the ground to crackle underfoot. It means bundling up in sweatshirts and jackets to enjoy the fall sunshine. It means fresh produce, horse-drawn hayrides and lots and lots of pumpkins for baking and carving. These aspects of the season all come into play in A Fairy-Tale Fall, a level two Step Into Reading book focusing on the Disney Princesses.

At the time this book was published in 2010, there were nine heroines with the official Disney Princess designation. Of these, Snow White, Belle, Aurora, Jasmine, Ariel, Tiana and Cinderella make an appearance, each being the focus of four pages – except Cinderella, whose section is slightly elongated to five. The only ones missing are Mulan and Pocahontas. While this book delves into many aspects of this time of year, it covers some of the same territory as Sweet and Spooky Halloween, another recently published Disney Princesses book. Several of the sections involve dressing up, carving jack-o-lanterns and distributing tasty treats.

The book, written by Apple Jordan and illustrated by Francesco Lagramandi, was designed for children ranging from about four to seven years old who need a little help reading. Like other books at this Step Into Reading level, it features simple stories and vocabulary and short sentences. Actually, “stories” is a bit of a stretch; it’s more a series of descriptions. Still, there is a story-ish quality to it, especially since we are seeing these familiar fairy tale characters in their very distinct settings. Not only do we get each of the seven princesses above, we also see many of the supporting characters from the movies in which they first appeared.

The Snow White pages depict a costume party at the dwarfs’ cottage attended by Snow White, her prince and all seven dwarfs. The costumes on the dwarfs are very cute and fitting for their personalities. For instance, ornery Grumpy is a growling bear, while shy Bashful is a ghost, entirely covered by a white sheet with holes for eyes. My favorite costume is Sleepy’s, as he dresses as a donkey who looks very much like gloomy gray Eeyore. While no other section features such elaborate costumes, the merfolk and their friends hold a grand masquerade, and so does Cinderella after making adorable costumes for Jaq, Gus and the other mice.

Aurora – here referred to as Sleeping Beauty – basks in the beauty of the autumnal woodland and shares a feast with her forest friends. Jasmine and Aladdin give goodies away to the children of Agrabah, and Belle bakes pumpkin pie for the Beast and his enchanted staff. Meanwhile, Tiana and Naveen ride a festive float through a parade. Some of the celebrations are more lavish than others, but all look like a lot of fun.

The book’s illustrations are excellent and full of color and detail, with all but a couple of them being two-page spreads. I love the ones that feature several different characters at once, whether animals or humans; there’s so much to look at on these pages that it’s well worth lingering a moment or two beyond what it will take to read. Most pages have one or two sentences, though there is the occasional three-sentence page. These are all quite short, however, and Jordan uses plenty of repetition to make things easier for unsteady readers.

Although this book was created by a different writer-artist team than Sweet and Spooky Halloween, the similarities between the two are sometimes striking. The most obvious shared image is Cinderella and the prince riding off in a pumpkin-shaped carriage, with the scenes of the Atlantica masquerade also suggesting that they might have been going for some consistency between the two books. Another similarity is that Ariel and Belle are not yet married, while it would appear that the other princesses are, though it’s not entirely clear with Jasmine and Aurora, whose appellation of Sleeping Beauty adds to the ambiguity.

These two books would make good companions for each other, but if you’re only going to get one, I’d go with this, as there are more princesses and more fall activities in the mix. The distribution of princesses is also almost perfectly balanced, unlike in Sweet and Spooky Halloween, and giving each princess her own space makes it feel more organized. A great little book for young Disney Princess enthusiasts, A Fairy-Tale Fall offers a chance to see terrific characters interact in a charming fall setting.