She was finally forced out of the writers’ closet when she received her Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. After detours studying in Mexico, the UK, and a year and a half as an unpaid missionary in Paraguay, Shannon earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Utah. Hale continued to write secretly for years while pursuing acting in television, stage, and improv comedy. At age 10, she began to write books, mostly fantasy stories where she was the heroine. Shannon Hale was a storyteller from birth. Yet when danger comes to the academy and threatens all their lives, it is Miri, named for a tiny mountain flower, who must find a way to save her classmates-and the one chance to leave the mountain each of them is determined to secure as her own.įrom acclaimed author Shannon Hale comes the Newbery Honor-winning novel about would-be princesses and one small but determined girl’s destiny. The prince himself will travel to the village to choose her, but first all eligible girls must attend a makeshift mountain academy to prepare themselves for royal lowlander life.Īt the school, Miri soon finds herself confronted by bitter competition among the girls and her own conflicting desires to be chosen by the prince. Then word comes from the valley that the king’s priests have divined Mount Eskel to be the home of the prince’s bride-to-be-the next princess. But Miri has never been allowed to work there, perhaps, she thinks, because she is so small. For as long as she can remember, Miri has dreamed of working alongside the other villagers in the quarries of her beloved mountainside. High on the side of rocky Mount Eskel, far from the valleys where gardens are green and lush, where lowlanders make laws, Miri’s family has lived forever, pounding a living from the stone of the mountain itself.

Princess academy series book 1