The Daughters of the Stars

The Daughter of the Stars is my absolute favorite book in the whole world. Chances are though, that you've never heard of it. It was published in 1939. The author was Mary Crary and the illustrator was Edmund Dulac. My mother used to read the book to me and this may be part of why it's my favorite.

In elementary school we had dress as your favorite character day. There were plenty of Dorothy of OZ costumes or Cat in the Hat. I was always Astrella, one of the daughters of the stars. I had a big black cloak I would wrap around me and I would pretend the large bright flowers on the cloak were really the stars like on Astrella's cloak. Another thing that made the book my favorite was Astrella, Perdita's mother, was there for the duration of the book. Unlike Cinderella and Snow White who were left with their Step Mothers after their own mother's had died, Perdita had a mother and her mother does not die.

I would like to share the forward of the book:

"Readers of fairy tales and other romantic fiction will have noticed before this that the Mothers of the heroines are seldome featured. One would imagine that the effort of producing a female child destined to adventure was too much for the average Queen or Princess, since, if she has not already expired before the story opens, she usually manages to pass away before its close. Indeed, the only well-known ladies we can recall at the moment who do not so indulge themselves are Shakespeare's Hermione and Thaisa, who only pretend to be dead during the years their daughters most need them, and Lady Capulet, who cannot be said to shine as a pattern of maternity. And we know that this state of things so depressed us when were a small child that we made an early resolve to create a young heroine whose Mother should possess, besides beauty and rank, the additional and stupendous virtue of being alive.
Thus it will be seen that , from the first page to the last, Astrella is never permitted the slightest excuse for decease; and although no reunion is described at the end, the reader may be assured that her daughter's return to the earth finds her definitely and permanently in statu quo. Which is surely not unreasonable, inasmuch as the death-rate of actual Mothers does not appear to be alarming; and we could name more than one beside whom our fictious lady is but a delicate shadow."

Sadly, the book is very difficult to find and I've only been able to find it in rare book stores and through www.bookfinder.com. There are only two illustrations in the book, but they are both marvelous. More illustrations were supposed to have been included, but due to the war they were unable to do so.

This book is very special to me and I plan to read it to my daughters, just as my mother read it to me. Maybe some day, my daughters will read it to their daughters.