Jackie and Dede Kendall. Lady in Waiting for Little Girls: Strengthening the Heart of Your Princess. Birmingham, AL: New Hope Publishers, 2009, 127 pp.

This book is formatted to be read and enjoyed together by a mother and daughter. It is targeted at girls from ages 5-9 with the goal of “empowering [your daughter] to comprehend, to respond, and to remember God’s Word, and to make godly choices” (pg 10). This is accomplished through 10 “Princess Choices.” These are choices such as: obedience, diligence, faith, virtue, etc.

This is a compact book that can be read easily and quickly by an adult. However, this book is very interactive. It provides tips on crafts, projects, games, and lots of other ideas of how mothers can reinforce the principles being taught. So it could take a mother and a daughter a while to finish the book. One of the things that I really like about the book also is one of the things that bothers me about it. It contains notes specifically for the mother, which can be tremendously helpful to the mother who is not sure about something like this. However, they are interspersed throughout the text and cause it to become awkward if the daughter is reading the chapter/section out loud. This is because the helpful notes to mom stand in stark contrast to the tone and style of the text before and after the notes. Also, the notes are often written in a form that could literally be read by the mother to the daughter as though it was the mother’s own words to her daughter—lending to the awkwardness of the notes. I think the book is excellent in regard to content and the presentation of that information (given the target ages of 5-9).

You can purchase this book at Amazon.com or the WMU online store.