To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses [Hardcover]

Hugh Brewster (Author), Laurie McGaw (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up

Princesses live in splendid palaces with servants to grant their every wish....

Or do they? Here the stories of twelve real princesses reveal what life behind the palace walls is really like.

"This night I think to die, declares Elizabeth Tudor as she shivers in the Tower of London in 1554. Her half sister, Queen Mary, sees her as a rival to the throne. But Elizabeth survives, and in four more years, she is queen.

Two hundred years later, fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette of Austria is told she will marry the heir to the French throne, whom she hasn't even met. She could never have imagined that the crowds who cheer her and her young husband will one day cry out for their blood.

Princess Victoria is eleven when she learns she will someday become England's queen. Princess Ka'iulani of Hawai'i is told just the opposite. "You will never be queen," whispers her dying mother in an eerie prophecy

For Anastasia and her three sisters, daughters of the Tsar of Russia, home is a beautiful palace surrounded by gardens and lakes. But war and revolution will shatter their sheltered world forever.

The world will also change for Ayesha Devi, daughter of an Indian maharaja, and for Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, the two little princesses of 1930s' Great Britain. And they change with it, setting the style that is followed by the princesses of today.

Throughout this handsome book, elegant portraits and period artifacts and photographs complement the story of each princess and recreate the worlds in which they lived. Together, the lives of these young royal women tell a story more fascinating than any fairy tale.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hugh Brewster and Laurie Coulter tell true stories of 12 famous females in To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses. Among them: Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne at age 13, and Hawaii's Princess Ka`iulani, whose mother on her death bed declared that Ka`iulani would never be queen. Laurie McGaw's regal oil portraits open each section. Period prints and photographs, timelines, a glossary, index and selected bibliography round out the volume.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 4 Up-Students and teachers alike will appreciate the research and literate style of this unusual approach to collective biography. The authors have chosen to focus on 12 royals-some well known, others more obscure-and to illustrate their public and personal lives. The book begins by exploring the rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and her half sister, Mary Tudor. A later chapter is devoted to Hawaii's Princess Ka`iulani, who fought to keep her island nation independent, and who died tragically at age 24. Time lines place each princess in historical context, showing the national and world events happening during her era. Although the choice of royals doesn't exhibit a broad representation of nations (five of the princesses are from the British monarchy), the format works because of the informative artwork. Readers will want to study the color portraits that have been reproduced from museum collections. The authors offer meticulous credits for these and other illustrations, as well as a strong selected bibliography. However, because of this painstaking research, one wonders about the need for supplemental paintings by McGaw, used on the cover and throughout the work. Although they are beautiful, they serve to modernize the look of each princess. In a book as well documented as this, it seems that more can be learned from the original portraits than from stylized representations, but this criticism should not discourage purchase.

Barbara Buckley, Rockville Centre Public Library, NY

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 64 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060294809
• ISBN-13: 978-0060294809
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 9.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,273,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To Be a Princess, September 26, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses (Hardcover)

I have always loved reading about royalty, so naturally I enjoyed this book. It introduces you to the famous (and not so famous) princesses of the world. I only wish the authors went a bit deeper in the biographies. I noticed a striking resemblance in the facts mentioned in many princess biographies to facts mentioned in the Royal Diaries series. Coincidence? Perhaps. This is a nice book for younger children, with nice illustrations and pictures, but I find The Royal Diaries more engrossing and in-depth.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, December 7, 2004

By 

Roberta K. (Wichita, KS, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses (Hardcover)

I had intended to read just one story a day in this fascinating book, but found it impossible to stop with just that one story. Brewster and Coulter write well and know their princesses. The writing just seems to fill the reader in on so many aspects of the princesses' lives. I can see this book enticing youngsters to want to read more about the young ladies in the stories. As an avid adult reader, I have read enough about the princesses to give me background and fill in some of the information left out. But for a young someone just discovering these people, their appetites would be whetted and I would think they would want to find other books to read. Definitely a fascinating book. The pictures are placed throughout the text in a reader-friendly fashion. My only qualm was the sentence in the last paragraph on Elizabeth and Margaret: "Queen Elizabeth still rules England." I don't know much about England's government, but I'm pretty sure the queen does not "rule" England. However, I'd still recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about the world's royalty. It was a fun and interesting read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-compiled stories about real-life princesses, July 5, 2009

By 

Z Hayes (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: To Be a Princess: The Fascinating Lives of Real Princesses (Hardcover)

This would be a great book for a young reader who loves history and princesses. Actually, I liked this book even as an adult reader [we were in a used bookstore looking for books on princesses, and I came across this title].

"To Be a Princess" features true accounts of real-life princesses and includes the stories of:
Mary [1516-58] and Elizabeth Tudor[1533-1603] of England
Marie Antoinette[1755-1793] of France
Victoria [later Queen Victoria] of England [1819-1901]
Princess Ka'iulani of Hawai'i [1875-99]
The Russian imperial princesses, i.e. Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia Nikolayevna
Princess Gayatri Devi of India [1919-]
Elizabeth and Margaret Windsor of England

The book also features an epilogue "To be a Princess", a brief commentary about lives of contemporary princesses. There is also a glossary, selected bibliography and picture credits.

This is an interesting book that provides a brief yet insightful look into the lives of actual princesses in history.