Princess Academy

Miri lives with her father and older sister in their high mountain village, where they quarry linder, a marble-like stone used for palaces in the lowlands. Unlike the other girls in the village, Miri has never been allowed in the quarry. She believes it is because she is too small and weak, and that the rest of the village must resent and despise her. But all of the foundations of her life are shaken when it is announced that the prince will choose a wife from among the girls of her village, and that all of the girls between ages 12 and 18 must leave their homes to be trained for a year before meeting the prince. They must go to a "Princess Academy" to be established three hours down the mountain.

At the Academy, though their tutor is strict and rather mean, Miri discovers that she enjoys learning, which comes in handy when the other girls ostracize her for getting them all punished. But she also begins learning things her tutor never intended: how to see beyond people's facades to their true characters, how to enable her village to rise from poverty, and how to develop the mysterious "quarry-speak" into a means of wordless communication. What she can't figure out, though, is whether or not she hopes to be chosen as the next princess.