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Elizabeth I Red Rose Of The House Of Tudor (2001)

by Kathryn Lasky(Favorite Author)

3.87 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Scholastic Inc.

review 1: Queen Elizabeth I. Pretty much everyone knows she was a good queen and some people know what she accomplished during her reign (like outlawing wife-beating after 10:00pm, according to one of my Bathroom Readers), but not many really know much about her childhood and teenage years. In this installment of the Royal Diaries, Kathryn Lasky presents a Rated G version of Elizabeth’s teenage years for people ages 10-12.This book really contains no new information for me, but readers who have yet to discover the wonders of historical fiction will love it. Elizabeth is a good main character and a very interesting narrator as she is strong even when she is betrayed and mistreated by her own father, King Henry VIII. We really see the woman she will become later on as she learns... more skills that were unusual for women of the time, like archery, falconry and languages like Greek and Latin. And we also see how she yearns for her father’s acknowledgement of her, how she treasures every smile or every bit of encouragement he gives her.The plot isn’t what I would normally call fast-paced, but it is interesting enough. Young readers will sympathize with Elizabeth while learning a great deal about Tudor England. Really, what more could you ask for in historical fiction?I give this book 3.5/5 stars, rounded up to 4 stars for Goodreads rating purposes.
review 2: I'm curious what the author was thinking targeting the ten-year-old girl as the audience for this book. This was my first of the Royal Diaries series to read (after sampling a few of the Dear America books and liking them) so I suppose it came as culture shock to be reading the details of Anne Boleyn's beheading and the darker sides of the Tudor Saga coming from a child's perspective. Yes, Elizabeth lived these things and yes, it made her stronger, but after reading this book myself and mentioning its contents to my girls, they chose not to read it for themselves (which is why I had bought these books in the first place). The writing style just seems more angled towards late-teen girls (who are already savoring all that drama and intrigue in high school) and not the care-free tweens who roll their eyes every time I say anything that could lead to a history lesson.So yes, while I did enjoy this read myself (as a guy who already likes history), this book was not what I had hoped it would be (history for my kids). less

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