The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. Christopher Healy. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Christopher Healy
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Детская проза
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007479924
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      For Dashiell and Bryn, my heroes

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       Title Page

      

       Map of the Kingdoms

       6. Prince Charming Has No Sense of Direction

       7. Prince Charming Has No Idea What’s Going On

       8. Prince Charming Is Afraid of the Dark

       9. Prince Charming Is a Wanted Man

       10. Prince Charming Annoys the King

       11. Prince Charming Takes a Dive

       12. Prince Charming Hugs Trees

       13. Prince Charming Is Completely Unnecessary

       14. Prince Charming Falls Flat

       15. Prince Charming Should Not Be Left Unsupervised

       16. Prince Charming Meets a Piece of Wood

       17. Prince Charming Still Has No Idea What’s Going On

       18. Prince Charming Gets Battered and Fried

       19. Prince Charming Needs a Bath

       20. Prince Charming Walks into a Bar

       21. Prince Charming Joins a Gang

       22. Prince Charming Is a Sneak

       23. Prince Charming Takes the Wrong Seat

       24. Prince Charming Hates Children

       25. Prince Charming Really Needs to Figure Out What’s Going On

       26. Prince Charming Gives Up

       27. Prince Charming Gets Good News and Bad News

       28. Prince Charming Is Doomed

       29. Prince Charming Does Exactly What He Said He’d Never Do

       30. Prince Charming Almost Saves the Day

       31. Prince Charming Gets Just What He Thinks He Wanted

       EPILOGUE: Prince Charming Goes Where Everybody Knows His Name

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      

       Copyright

      About the Publisher

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      Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn’t know that, did you?

      Don’t worry. There’s a lot you don’t know about Prince Charming: Prince Charming has no idea how to use a sword; Prince Charming has no patience for dwarfs; Prince Charming has an irrational hatred of capes.

      Some of you may not even realize that there’s more than one Prince Charming. And that none of them are actually named Charming. No one is. Charming isn’t a name; it’s an adjective.

      But don’t blame yourself for your lack of Prince Charming–based knowledge; blame the lazy bards. You see, back in the day, bards and minstrels were the world’s only real source of news. It was they who bestowed fame upon people. They were the ones who sculpted any hero’s (or villain’s) reputation. Whenever something big happened—a damsel was rescued, a dragon was slain, a curse was broken—the royal bards would write a song about it, and their wandering minstrels would perform that tune from land to land, spreading the story across multiple kingdoms. But the bards weren’t keen on details. They didn’t think it was important to include the names of the heroes who did all that damsel rescuing, dragon slaying, and curse breaking. They just called all those guys “Prince Charming.”

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      It didn’t even matter to the bards whether the person in question was a truly daring hero (like Prince Liam, who battled his way past a bone-crushing, fire-blasting magical monster in order to free a princess from an enchanted sleeping spell) or some guy who merely happened to be in the right place at the right time (like Prince Duncan, who also woke a princess from a sleeping spell, but only because some dwarfs told him to). No, those bards gave a man the same generic name whether he nearly died (like Prince Gustav, who