Review: "Princess Megan" by Trisha Magraw

Princess Megan by Trisha Magraw
Published 1998
★★

A quick dip back into the Magic Attic Club strain of my childhood rereads. In this one, real-world Megan faces a dilemma when her high-powered attorney mother wants Megan to step in for her at a volunteer event—but Megan has a volunteer commitment of her own. When she's magically transported to a version of medieval France that has unicorns and invisibility cloaks and Merlin, she has to put her problem-solving skills to use to save a unicorn. How are these two plotlines related? Nobody knows.

I'm not sure I read this one as a kid—it rings very few bells. (I just read it now because I wanted to see what they'd do with a princess plotline.) I don't think this is one of the stronger books of the series; in some, the characters are magically (and temporarily) given the skills and knowledge they need to function in their magic-attic roles, but here, Megan is basically just herself. She's immediately befriended by a servant her age (who doesn't think it at all odd that Megan knows nothing about their world, and who tells Megan all the secrets that could presumably get the servant's family banished or killed), and the girl just...tows Megan around and tells her all the things that Megan should already know.

I rather wish this one hadn't gone into fantasyland. Seems like there was a chance to add to the historical background and information, no? We get bits and pieces about what life might have entailed in medieval France (e.g., servants sleeping on straw on the floor; Megan learns that not everyone can read), but then Megan has to go steal an invisibility cloak and chase down a unicorn, and that's kind of the end of the historical information.

Back in the real world, Megan manages to have an adult sit-down conversation with her mother, with the satisfying-to-them result that her mother's commitments are spread between Megan and her friends. Who are ten. Because it's great parenting to have to get elementary schoolers to take over an adult's job...