The Prince and the Dressmaker
Written and illustrated by Jen Wang
First Second, 2018, 288pp
ISBN: 978-1626723634
Somewhere in Paris, Prince Sebastian of Belgium is hiding a secret. His parents think he is searching for a wife, but at night when alone in his dressing room, he instead dons his mother’s elegant dresses and a long flowing orange wig. He becomes Lady Crystallia, someone so different that he finally feels like himself. He has everything he needs, except someone to whom he can tell his secret. And then he finds Frances. On the other side of the city, Frances dreams of creating beautiful dresses while working as a seamstress’ assistant. When Sebastian stumbles across one of her original designs, he becomes enamored and whisks her away to become his own personal secret stylist.
Jen Wang’s graphic novel follows Sebastian and Frances as they struggle to keep Lady Crystallia’s real identity a secret as she quickly becomes a famous fashion icon thanks to Frances’ designs and Sebastian’s charisma. As they become closer, the secrecy begins to weigh on the two of them, and Frances decides to leave when protecting Sebastian’s alternate identity prevents her from meeting her lifelong hero. Losing Frances sends Sebastian into a destructive spiral, which ends with his parents uncovering all of his secrets.
Sebastian had assumed his parents would not be supportive of his outfits, but they are more supportive than anyone could have imagined. His father, the king, volunteers himself and his guards to model Frances’ designs to help Sebastian win back his best friend. The story ends with a touching celebration of friendship and a call of acceptance for gender nonconforming individuals with Frances and Sebastian both pursuing their dreams together with no more secrets.
Wang tells Sebastian and Frances’ story through whimsical drawings, featuring lots of soft curving lines and, of course, many big flowing dresses. She pulls predominately on a pastel color palate, which provides a sense of childishness and innocence. This helps to engage the reader while introducing them to the serious issues discussed in the book, such as gender identity, stereotypes and family expectations.
In the classroom, The Prince and the Dressmaker could easily be paired with similarly styled graphic novels like Molly Knox Ostertag’s (2017) graphic novel Witch Boy, and Katie O’Neill’s (2016) graphic novel Princess Princess Ever After, to examine gender norms and gender identity. The Prince and the Dressmaker could also be paired with the non-graphic young adult novels on gender identity, such as If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo (2018), I Am J by Cris Beam (2012), or Arin Andrew’s (2015) autobiography Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen. In a different vein, it could also be used in conjunction with Angie Thomas’ (2017) novel The Hate U Give, to look at how different situations ask us not to be true to ourselves and how students can stand up in those situations for who they are and what they believe in.
As a New York Times bestselling author-illustrator, Jen Wang has written numerous graphic novels, her most recent being Stargazing (2019). The Prince and the Dressmaker, however, has been her most successful. It has won numerous awards including the NPR Best Book of 2018, 2019 Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards, Teen Book of the Year, and a Boston Globe Best Children’s Book of 2018. Wang works as a cartoonist, writer and illustrator in Los Angeles where she also acts as the co-founder and organizer for the comic festival Comic Arts Los Angeles.
Emily Ramser, Texas Woman’s University
WOW Review, Volume XII, Issue 3 by Worlds of Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on work at https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/review/xiii-3/