It's also about friendship, the importance of education, and being a strong person and true to your heart. What I love about this book is that it's about more than just a competition to win the attention and heart of the prince. Miri deeply wants to be at the top of the class, but she's also conflicted because of her feelings for a boy back in the village. Most of the story follows Miri and the other village girls as they deal with a harsh, cold head mistress of the academy, and the competition between them to be the head of the class (which earns you the best dress at the princess ball, plus some other perks).

The king's ministers, appalled that their prince needs to marry a rough and unsophisticated village girl, set up an academy, a day's hike down the mountain from the village, and force all the marriageable teenage girls in the village to go live there and be intensely tutored for a year, at which point the prince will arrive in great pomp, there will be a formal dance, and he'll choose his bride.

One day the simple life ends: the priests of their country have mystically divined that the prince is to marry a girl from their village. It's a sometimes harsh life, with everyone kind of scraping to get by, but filled with love and close friendships. Miri is a teenage girl living in a small, simple mountain village, where everyone makes a living quarrying a lovely marble rock that is found only on their mountain.

The Princess Academy is a favorite comfort read, and a delightful older middle grade/younger YA fantasy, nominated for the 2006 Newbery Award.

Princess academy shannon hale series