Description
Anastasia is the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia. Anastasia is used to a life of luxury; her major concerns are how to get out of her detested schoolwork to play in the snow, go ice-skating, or have picnics. She wears diamonds and rubies, and every morning her mother, the princess, tells her which matching outfit she and her three sisters shall wear that day. It’s a fairy tale life — until everything changes with the outbreak of war between Russia and Germany. As Russia enters WWI, hunger and poverty grows among the peasants, and soon they are not pleased with their ruler. While the czar is trying win a war and save their country, the country is turning on the royal family. When her father and the rest of the family are imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, suddenly Anastasia understands what this war is costing the people. In the pages of her diary, Anastasia chronicles the wealth and luxury of her royal days, as well as the fall from power, and her uncertain fate.
Book 2: For a more detailed account of Russia – The Family Romanov and the Fall of Imperial Russia
“[A] superb history…. In these thrilling, highly readable pages, we meet Rasputin, the shaggy, lecherous mystic…; we visit the gilded ballrooms of the doomed aristocracy; and we pause in the sickroom of little Alexei, the hemophiliac heir who, with his parents and four sisters, would be murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.” —The Wall Street Journal
Here is the tumultuous, heartrending, true story of the Romanovs—at once an intimate portrait of Russia’s last royal family and a gripping account of its undoing. Using captivating photos and compelling first person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming (Amelia Lost; The Lincolns) deftly maneuvers between the imperial family’s extravagant lives and the plight of Russia’s poor masses, making this an utterly mesmerizing read as well as a perfect resource for meeting Common Core standards.
Book 3: Elizabeth I
As a new edition to The Royal Diaries series, this factual tale offers young readers an insight to the life and times of this famous royal prior to her days on the throne as the Queen of England.
Book 4: Cleopatra VII
While her father is in hiding after attempts on his life, twelve-year-old Cleopatra records in her diary how she fears for her own safety and hopes to survive to become Queen of Egypt some day.
Book 5: Isabel of Castilla
When the King of Spain decides to use the marriage of his fourteen-year-old sister for political gain, young Isabel finds creative and clever ways to avoid becoming a bride until she meets the man whom she wants to wed.
Book 6: As told by Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola
As the Portuguese slave traders find their way to the city of Angola in West Africa, young Nzinga, daughter of King Kiluanji, must face up to the dangers around her and find a way to help lead her father’s people through this tragic period. 125,000 first printing.
Book 7: As told by
After being forcibly annexed by the U.S., the Hawaiian people turn to the young Princess Kaiulani in the hopes that their toppled monarchy can be restored.
Readers can embark on an extraordinary journey to Southern China in the 6th century A.D. where they will meet sixteen-year-old Ch’iao Kuo, a born leader called Red Bird, whose bravery and brilliance is unrivaled.
Amazon.com Review:
Being a princess is not all glittery parties and lavish holidays by the sea. Well, actually, it is, but it’s not all fun. Young Princess Victoria is constantly surrounded by family and advisors, allowing her no privacy and very few opportunities to express herself until she purloins an old ledger book from one of Kensington Palace’s stables. She promptly begins recording her secrets, daily trials, and naughty witticisms (her uncle, King George IV, has big, plump hands, “the size of a plucked quail.”) in this very incongruous journal. The biggest secret of all, however, is one that is kept from our heroine. It is not until well into her two-year-long diary that Victoria pieces together her family tree to discover that she is next in line to the throne. This intriguing installment of the Royal Diaries series will inspire many readers to delve deeper into Queen Victoria’s life as the longest reigning queen of England.
Book 10:
Readers take a step back in time to 16th-century France in this year-long diary of adolescent Mary, Queen of Scots, who has fled from homeland to the Court of her betrothed in France.
Mary is only nine months old when she is crowned Queen of Scotland succeeding her father King James V. Because of political conflicts, she is forced to be separated from her mother and her country from the age of five. For the benefit of forging an alliance with France, the youngster is betrothed to Francis, the son of King Henry ll of France and his wife, the vicious and jealous Queen Catherine de Medici. Mary is sent to France to live in their care until she is old enough for the marriage to take place. It is at their home, the beautiful Chateau St. Germaine, that we first meet the irresistibly charming Mary at 11 years old. Keenly intelligent, she excels academically, and shows a talent for dance, music and poetry. She’s an expert horsewoman, skilled at archery and hawking.
This is a captivating story of fourteen-year-old Princess Sondok from seventh-century Korea.
During the seventh-century, the land which is now Korea was fraught with political and religious intrigue. The country was split into Three Kingdoms, each fighting for supremacy: Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche. Besides the warring kingdoms, there are three religions in conflict: Shamanism, the ancient female-dominated faith wherein Shamanist priestesses wield great power at court, foretelling the future, performing important national rituals, and healing sickness; Buddhism, the contemplative State religion; and Confucianism, a recent import from powerful China.
In the 1600s, the Moghul emperors of India were among the greatest and most superb rulers of the East. Jahanara is the daughter of one of these powerful figures, Shah Jahan, The Magnificent. A lover of refinement, his courts are of the finest architecture, priceless painting, unbelievable gardens, and ultra-fabulous wealth. Jahanara, the oldest and favorite of his children, is showered with emeralds and diamonds and rubies.
Author Barry Denenberg introduces us to a nineteenth-century Bavarian princess named Elisabeth who at age fifteen is engaged to the emperor of Austria and is swept into an unfamiliar world.
Author Barry Denenberg brings us into the whirlwind that is the life of Princess Elisabeth of Austria. A free and impetuous spirit, Elisabeth was chosen at the tender age of fifteen (over her older sister) to be the wife of Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria. From that moment on, she is thrown into an intimidating world of restrictions and tremendous responsibilities. Feeling lonely and alienated, Elisabeth is forced to rely upon her own personal strength, which is what eventually leads her down the aisle and into an uncertain future.
Book 14: Kiristina, Princess of Sweden
Upon discovering that their newborn infant was, in fact, female and not male as first thought, Queen Marie Eleonore wailed inconsolably and King Gustavus Adolphus declared, nevertheless, that the child be raised as a prince. At age six, upon the death of her father, the child Kristina, was proclaimed King of Sweden, with regents assigned to council until she assumes the throne at age eighteen. And indeed, her life followed her father’s plan. We meet Kristina when she’s almost twelve years old and eschewing feminine practices but reveling in the study of military tactics,
Book 15:
A political marriage is arranged between the thirty-three-year-old king of Xukpip and Princess Green Jay, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the king of Lakamha. The two are paired because of similar horoscopes — and Green Jay possesses skills that will be valuable to her husband-to-be: She can read and write. Author Anna Kirwan relates fascinating aspects of ancient Mayan culture as she shares the young princess’s physical and emotional state from the betrothal, with its distressing rituals, through her arduous journey to a foreign land and people, and a husband who is a complete stranger.
Kazunomiya, along with her royal family, is thought to be a divinity, descended from the goddess of the sun, and she lives an extremely sheltered life. However, when a Japanese general signs a treaty with the white-faced men from America, uncertainty and turmoil erupt in the kingdom. But the external threats do not compare to the tangled intrigue, romance, and politics that dominate the imperial palace, as wives and queens plot to destroy Kazunomiya and her mother.
It is 1654 in New England, native land of Algonquin tribes, among them the Pocasset, Wampanoag, and Narrangansett people. The pilgrims — called Coat-men by the Wampanoag — have settled here in the natives’ territory at Patuxit, a place that the Pilgrims have renamed Plymouth. Weetamoo’s father, Corbitant, is sachem, or chief, of the Pocassets. He is mistrustful of the colonists and imparts his beliefs about them to his daughter, who is next in line to become chief.
In 1769, a thirteen-year-old Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, begins a journal chronicling her life at the Austrian court and her preparations for her future role as queen of France.
With her signature narrative grace, Edwidge Danticat brings Haiti’s beautiful queen Anacaona to life. Queen Anacaona was the wife of one of her island’s rulers, and a composer of songs and poems, making her popular among her people. Haiti was relatively quiet until the Spanish conquistadors discovered the island and began to settle there in 1492.
The Spaniards treated the natives very cruelly, and when the natives revolted, the Spanish governor of Haiti ordered the arrests of several native nobles, including Anacaona, who was eventually captured and executed, to the horror of her people.
Fourteen-year-old Prussian princess Sophia finds herself entangled in her mother’s efforts to arrange a marriage between Sophia and Charles-Peter, a young German duke and nephew of the Russian empress Elizabeth. As Sophia’s mother moves to make the match, she and Sophia must travel from their humble home in Zerbst, Prussia, to Russia–the kingdom of Elizabeth. There, Sophia is renamed Catherine and married to Charles-Peter, but she watches helplessly as her family is torn from her, her own mother is involved in a spying ring against the empress, and all that is familiar to her disappears.
Fourteen-year-old Eleanor of Aquitaine lives in a castle in Poitier, France, with her father Count William of Aquitaine (son of William the Conqueror), and her 12-year-old sister Petronilla. Their mother died several years earlier, so their grandmother and ladies-in-waiting raise the girls. Eleanor is extremely intelligent and literate, having been carefully educated by royal tutors. Spinning bores her, as does weaving, sewing, and other housewifery skills expected of her. She would rather be a knight and ride off to war. In fact, in 1136, when her father is invited to help invade Normandy,
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