Customer Reviews

Elephants and Golden Thrones: Inside China's Forbidden City

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Trish Marx has chosen to tell the story of China's Forbidden City through its inhabitants. She takes us back in time to wake up in the palace with the Empress Dowager Gixi in the late 19th century. We see her bed and bedcovers. We watch her select her embroidered gown, and don her saphire dragonfly pin. We experience the exotic elegance of the enormous palace city from the 14th century to the present, always with an eye to the personal: the squadrons of servants laboring to maintain the emperor and his family, the thousands of candles and lanterns lighting the enormous rooms, the celebrations and rituals that dazzled visitors. Marx brings history to life...the next best thing to a visit to the Forbidden City itself!

Elephants and Golden Thrones has some of the loveliest photographs of China's Forbidden City that one could hope to see. The Forbidden City, called that because no one was allowed to enter without permission, is a fortress-walled palace-city within the city of Beijing (Peking). For over 500 hundred years the emperors of China ruled from within its confines and amassed a fortune in gold and jewels which were used to decorate both private and ceremonial areas.

Trish Marx tells the story of the beginning of the Forbidden City in the 1400s in the first of the nine chapter-stories in this book. The book is a combination picture book and historical non-fiction - much like the books found in museums that describe the artifacts there. Ellen B. Senisi has contributed photographs that illustrate the narration. Some are pictures of ancient art and others are relatively modern photos of people visiting the Forbidden City.

The stories are fascinating and while they are written with a young reader in mind, the information and vocabulary in the text make it equally suited for adult readers. It would make an excellent contribution to any school library as a valuable source of research material on China's history.

Note: This is book is only 48 pages, including the credits and glossary. At times I felt the author had trouble deciding who her real audience would be. Some detailed discussion of eunuchs and concubines could be problematic for elementary-aged readers.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

For over five hundred years the emperors of China ruled from an enormous palace city of over eight thousand decorated rooms hidden behind thirty-foot walls - a structure which came to be called The Forbidden City. ELEPHANTS AND GOLDEN THRONES: INSIDE CHINA'S FORBIDDEN CITY blends lovely color photos by Ellen B. Senisi with a discussion of life behind this wall, providing kids in grades 4-6 with a fine, lovely blend of color photos and Chinese cultural and political history.