The Short Version
- Voice: Justine Eyre carries Miss Minchin's establishment alone, with no second reader credited across six hours and fifty-four minutes.
- Big ideas: Sudden poverty, imagination as survival, dignity under humiliation, a classic aimed at children.
- Atmosphere: Gentle and sad by turns, sturdier than that subtitle suggests.
- Worth it?: Charming and short, though you should confirm which edition you are buying before spending anything.
An Enchanting Coming-of-Age Novel is the subtitle this audiobook carries, and Frances Hodgson Burnett certainly did not write it. The synopsis field is empty, the series line reads Puffin in Bloom with no position attached, and what survives is a narrator credit for Justine Eyre, a runtime of six hours and fifty-four minutes, a Brilliance Audio imprint dated January 5, 2010, and five reviews. Nearly everything I can tell you about this edition came from the people who reviewed it, and several of them were holding something else entirely.
Sara Crewe's Name Surfaces by Accident
Sara Crewe is the name to know, and the oldest entry in this column supplies it along with the book's original title. P. B. Sharp explains being sent back to the story by the death of Shirley Temple, downloading the film first, then ordering this unabridged version, and mentions in passing that the original edition was called Sara Crewe or what happened at Miss Minchin's. That is precisely what a synopsis exists to tell you, and here it arrives by accident, from a reader who was well over eighty at the time of writing.
Two Silent Votes and a Review for Another Book
Seven votes sit behind the 4.7 badge, and for once that number is unusually informative. Seven whole-star votes averaging out to 4.7 can only total 33 points from a possible 35. The five reviews you can read carry 24 of those points between them, four fives and one four. Which leaves nine points spread across two people who rated without writing, and nine points across two votes means one of them handed over a four as well. Two dissenters, both silent, both mild, and neither one willing to explain the deduction.
Texas Bill's five-star review is the one that ought to stop you. It praises an excellent edition of A Little Princess by SeaWolf Press, describes a paperback very well printed on good cream-colored paper and durably bound, and applauds SeaWolf for reprinting the original text just as it was, complete with the original illustrations. Detailed, useful, entirely sincere. It is also a review of a physical book from a publisher with no connection whatever to the Brilliance Audio recording this page is selling.
Justine Eyre Carries Sara Through Every Reversal
Justine Eyre is credited for all six hours and fifty-four minutes alone, which in this story means carrying Sara, Miss Minchin's establishment and everyone inside it through a swing from comfort into what mbr calls the worst possible circumstances, and out the other side. The engine of the book is Sara's pretending, as that same reviewer puts it, and pretending is a performed act before it is a written one. Holding it without tipping into sugar at one end or bleakness at the other is the whole job.
Karry J. tested it on the intended audience and filed both verdicts. The seven-year-old's review, quoted in full, runs: the cover looks pretty, I liked the ending. The grown-up's runs longer, an afternoon read-aloud for a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, a hit, as good as remembered from childhood, closing on the observation that the book has a sad, but happy, and that the ending is better for refusing to be perfect. Practically speaking, no other entry in the column earns its place as well, since it is the single entry here that tries the book out on the age group it was written for.
Three separate imprints appear on this one page, which is worth stating plainly before anybody spends money. The publisher field says Brilliance Audio. The series field says Puffin in Bloom. The reviews praise SeaWolf Press. Those are three different objects and only the first is an audiobook. A listing that cannot settle on which edition it describes is a listing where scores have been pooled across several products, and the average sitting above them is worth roughly that much.
P.B. Sharp's Memory Cuts Off Mid-Word
Kimberly Louise, who filed the only four in the visible column, objects that the print is VERY small, calls the book very good and enthralling regardless, and adds that it suited a thirteen-year-old perfectly. A complaint about type size on a recording is not a failing in the reviewer. It is a failing in how these responses get gathered. What it does mean is that the single criticism available to read here cannot possibly apply to the thing you would be buying.
Puffin in Bloom sits in the series field with no number beside it, and nothing on this page explains what that series is or where this title falls within it. A 2010 recording wearing a series label with no position is usually an import artifact, a field copied from some other record and never cleaned up afterward. Either way, do not use it to go hunting for a second volume. Nothing on this listing suggests a second volume exists.
What P. B. Sharp remembered, after three quarters of a century away from the book, was the atmosphere: a charming book read many times as a child, the plucky little Sara, and then the sentence breaks off mid-word on absorbing the atmosphere of foggy Londo. It stops at exactly the point where a description should have begun. That fragment is the nearest thing to a synopsis this listing offers, and it comes from somebody recalling a childhood in another century.
Bedtime Listening for Ages Five to Ten
Children somewhere between five and ten will take this well read aloud, on the evidence of Karry J.'s afternoon, and six hours and fifty-four minutes divides neatly into bedtime portions. Adults revisiting it will find what mbr found, a girl who stays optimistic in appalling circumstances and treats people respectfully while doing it, plus what that review calls some psychology lessons. Classics listeners who prefer a single voice to a full-cast production are the natural fit for this particular recording.
Hold off if you need to know which text you are getting, because this page will not tell you and its reviews name at least two rival editions between them. Hold off too when a full cast is what you had in mind, because a single voice holds the whole thing here and the runtime says so. For everyone else, the story has outlived every edition argued over here, and seven hours is a modest bet on it. Ask the seller which text you are buying before the credit is spent.
A Few Questions About A Little Princess: An Enchanting Coming-of-Age Novel
Which text does this A Little Princess audiobook actually use?
The page does not say. No synopsis appears at all, the publisher line reads Brilliance Audio, and the reviews praise a SeaWolf Press paperback instead. One reviewer notes the story first appeared under the title Sara Crewe or what happened at Miss Minchin's, and describes what was ordered as an unabridged version. Confirm before buying.
Is A Little Princess suitable for young children as an audiobook?
Karry J. used it during an afternoon with a seven-year-old and a five-year-old listening together and calls the result a hit, with the seven-year-old approving of how it ends. Another buyer chose it for a thirteen-year-old. The story does pass through real destitution, so parts of the running time are genuinely bleak.
