The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich
by Deya Muniz
Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 250 pages.
Review written June 20, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich is a delightfully fun and light-hearted graphic novel about a young noblewoman named Cam who must pose as a man in order to inherit her father’s estate. She moves to the capital city to be far away from the people who knew her before her father’s death – and catches the princess’s eye.
The two of them do many things together, including enjoying grilled cheese sandwiches. (Everyone in the capital city has a name that’s a type of cheese.) As they fall in love, Cam realizes she can’t take things any further because she needs to keep her secrets. And nobody likes to find out the one they love has been hiding who they really are.
I was rather amazed this is a debut. The drawings are wonderful – I especially loved all the outfits. Cam keeps her hair long but wears fake sideburns and nice suits when posing as a man, and it wasn’t too hard to believe that she could have fooled people. (Maybe a little hard. But not too bad, because she did look like a well-dressed young man.) There’s variety in the panel sizes, and the story keeps moving at a nice pace. It only took me about an hour to read, and left me smiling.
I’m writing this before discussing anything with the Morris committee, so my opinions are entirely my own, and I’ll have to wait to publish this review until after we’ve made our decision. But I am looking forward to more from this author, and I think teens are going to love her work.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/princess_and_the_grilled_cheese_sandwich.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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