The Wide-Awake Princess

The Wide-Awake Princess is a novel for young readers by the American writer E. D. Baker, published in 2010. It takes the story of Sleeping Beauty and looks at it from the point of view of the sister who is left out of it.

Princess Annie is the younger sister of Gwen, the princess who is expected to prick her finger and sleep. When that happens, the whole castle falls asleep around her, and Annie is the only one still awake, because she is immune to magic.

That immunity is as much a curse as a blessing, and it is what allows her to leave the castle and go beyond the rose-covered hedge for help. What she has to do is find the man who is supposed to wake her sister and bring him back.

She is joined by one of her father's guards, Liam, who happened to be outside the castle when the sleeping spell took hold. The two of them travel through a country full of characters who are familiar from other fairy tales and some who are not.