Princess Mirror-Belle Books in Order

Princess Mirror-Belle turns an ordinary reflection into a very unusual companion. In Julia Donaldson's stories, Ellen meets a girl who looks just like her but insists she is a princess from a strange and distant place. Mirror-Belle comes out of mirrors with stories, confidence and plans that can make everyday situations much more complicated. Lydia Monks illustrates the adventures, giving the two girls' encounters a lively visual presence alongside the words.

Ellen's double doesn't behave like an ordinary reflection.

The friendship puts two versions of a girl beside each other: one living an everyday life, the other interpreting it through royal and magical experiences. Mirror-Belle's arrival means a familiar situation can suddenly acquire a different set of rules. The question isn't just whether her stories are true. Ellen also has to deal with what her visitor does, says and believes while everyone else is carrying on with normal life. That contrast supplies much of the comedy and gives each adventure a problem the girls must work through.

The original Princess Mirror-Belle collects short adventures involving such experiences as birthdays, a fair, school and a pantomime. These settings are recognisable without needing a large fantasy map or a complicated history of kingdoms. Mirror-Belle brings the magic into them herself. The books suit reading in episodes, with each story offering a new occasion for the same central relationship to cause surprises. Readers can get to know Ellen and then watch how her visitor responds to the next ordinary event.

In Princess Mirror-Belle and the Dragon Pox, Ellen has chicken pox while Mirror-Belle claims to have dragon pox and proposes a cure. The familiar discomfort of being ill becomes an adventure because the two girls understand it differently. The picture-book version gives their first encounters another form, while the illustrated story collections offer longer reading. The range therefore lets families spend time with the same characters in more than one format, depending on whether they want a shared picture book or a collection of episodes.

Princess Mirror-Belle and the Magic Shoes continues the adventures in another illustrated collection. Later titles, including Princess Mirror-Belle and the Party Hoppers and Princess Mirror-Belle and Snow White, keep the central pair in view while drawing on celebrations and fairy-tale associations. The recurring interest lies in how Mirror-Belle's confidence changes Ellen's experience of the world. An event that begins with ordinary expectations can become something neither Ellen nor the other people involved had planned.

Start with Princess Mirror-Belle to meet Ellen and her surprising double.

The stories combine fantasy with comic trouble rather than an extended quest against a single enemy. Their continuing thread is the girls' connection, along with the pleasure of not knowing what Mirror-Belle will claim or attempt next. Readers who enjoy familiar routines being interrupted by an imaginative visitor can follow the collections in publication order, or return to an individual adventure for another encounter with the princess in the mirror.