Princess Furball retold by Charlotte Huck, illustrated by Anita Lobel, 1989.

There was a princess whose mother died when she was only a baby and whose father never paid much attention to her. In spite of this misfortune, she had a happy childhood because her nurse loved her and let her play with other children. She arranged lessons appropriate to a princess with skilled tutors and let the princess learn how to cook in the royal kitchen.

However, when the princess was grown, the old nurse died, and the princess was very lonely. Her father only cared about the money he could get from the princess’s marriage, and to the princess’s horror, he arranged a marriage to an ogre who promised him fifty wagons of silver in exchange for the princess.

Unable to face the prospect of such a horrible marriage, the princess requests a special gift from her father for her wedding. She asks for three dresses: one golden like the sun, one silver like the moon, and one as sparkling as a the stars. She also asks for a special fur coat made of a thousand different types of fur. At first, the princess doesn’t think the king will be able to meet her demands, but to shock, he sets his people to accomplishing the task and presents her with everything she asked for.

Deciding that there is no other option but to run away, she takes the three dresses with her along with three small golden treasures that belonged to her mother: a ring, a thimble, and a tiny spinning wheel. She also takes along her favorite soup seasonings, which she got from the castle’s cook. Then, she puts on the bulky fur coat and flees into the woods.

In the woods, she is found by the hunting party of a neighboring king. At first, they mistake her for some kind of strange animal. When they find out that she’s a person, they take her back to their castle and put her to work in the kitchen. There, they make her do all the messy cleaning jobs. Nobody knows her real name, so everyone just calls her Furball after her strange, bulky coat made of a thousand patches of fur.

The princess always wears the fur coat as a disguise, but one day, she finds out that the young king of this kingdom is having a ball. She slips away from her kitchen duties and dresses in her dress like the sun. When she is unrecognizable as the kitchen servant, she is able to meet and dance with the king. Being herself is essentially a disguise!

When she slips away from the king and returns to the kitchen, the cook has her make soup for the king, and she uses her special blend of seasonings. When no one is looking, she she also puts her golden ring into the king’s bowl. When the king finds the ring, he asks the cook about it. The cook admits that Furball made the soup, so the king questions her about the ring, but she doesn’t explain.

At the king’s next ball, the princess repeats the same performance, this time wearing the dress like the moon. This time, she slips the golden thimble into the king’s soup when she returns to the kitchen. Again, she doesn’t explain when the king questions her about the thimble.

As in many fairy tales, it’s the third time that’s the charm. When the princess shows up to a ball dressed her her dress like the stars and doesn’t have time to completely change when she gets back to the kitchen that all is revealed, and there’s a happy ending!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid in elementary school! I think I read it when I was about 7 years old, when the book was pretty new. I always liked fairy tales. There is a brief explanation at the beginning of the book that the story is a Cinderella variant. This version is very similar to the English folktale Catskin and to the tale of Many Furs or Thousand Furs by the Brothers Grimm.

Like so many little girls, I was fascinated as a kid with the concept of the dresses that resemble the sun, the moon, and the stars. The fur coat made of many animals is a little alarming to me now, but it makes a good disguise in the story. I love the illustrations that show the princess in all of her different dresses and the Furball disguise!

The story doesn’t explain why the princess put her treasures into the soup, but my guess was that she wanted an excuse to see the king again and a way to keep him intrigued about her identity and her relationship to the mysterious princess who keeps showing up to his balls. It’s only after the king decides that he really loves the mysterious princess that it’s safe to reveal her identity.