Princess Academy

Princess Academy is a novel by the American writer Shannon Hale, published in 2005. It is the first book in the series of the same name.

Miri is fourteen and comes from Mount Eskel, a village where the quarry is the whole of the village's working life and where she is not allowed to join the work. When the priests in the lowlands announce that the prince of Danland will choose his wife from the mountain, the girls are taken to an academy built to give them the manners and accomplishments of a royal court, and Miri finds herself in a competition with girls who have been her neighbours all her life.

The girls also find that they can speak to one another through the stone of their mountain, something Hale added while she was revising the book. The story follows what the education does to Miri, what the girls learn about each other, and whether she wants the prize they are all being trained for. It was named a Newbery Honor book, and the series continues in Princess Academy: Palace of Stone and Princess Academy: The Forgotten Sisters.