Betsy and the Emperor (Hardcover)

by Staton Rabin (Author) "I opened my bedroom window and inhaled-deeply, joyfully..." (more)
Key Phrases: Governor Lowe, Betsy Balcombe, Admiral Cockburn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-9–Betsy Balcombe has just returned to her remote island home of St. Helena from boarding school in London. At 14, she is a headstrong, adventure-seeking young lady. She gamely faces the challenge of playing host to Napoleon Bonaparte, who is exiled on the forbidding island after his capture at Waterloo. The only member of her family who is not timid around the former emperor of France, Betsy strikes up an unlikely friendship with "Boney" that surprises both of them. Rabin presents an interesting and intimate look at the life of one of history's most famous men. The relationship between Betsy and Napoleon is well captured and satisfying, and the historical details are well researched. However, some of the plot seems improbable, such as when Betsy watches her brothers' tutor die in a horrible accident that is partly her fault, only to be dancing and flirting at a ball a few days later. Still, this daredevil protagonist engages in many thrilling escapades, from a hot-air balloon flight to a horserace. An author's note fills in some of the details about the real Betsy Balcombe.–Anna M. Nelson, Seabrook Library, NH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 6-9. Fourteen-year-old Betsy Balcombe feels as much a prisoner of remote, rocky St. Helena as Napoleon Bonaparte, who spends part of his island exile quartered in the Balcombe family's guesthouse. Napoleon instantly recognizes a kindred spirit in the restless Betsy, and soon the unlikely companions are racing horses, playing whist, and practicing waltz steps. All this is pure embroidery, right? Au contraire, says first-time novelist Rabin; the friendship is documented. Unfortunately, the story's invented dramatic center is far-fetched, and how and why the protagonists forged such an unusual bond, one that flew in the face of not only nationalistic inclinations but also nineteenth-century propriety (though Rabin pointedly keeps things platonic), never becomes clear. Readers will almost certainly find themselves trolling the library and the Internet for more information and seeking out Betsy's autobiography, which curiously Rabin says she did not read. Devotees of Ann Rinaldi's novels and series such as the Royal Diaries, which offer a similar mix of facts and girl-powered fiction, will find Betsy's brush with a historical leviathan especially appealing. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689858809
• ISBN-13: 978-0689858802
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #915,915 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #86 in	Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Biographies > European
  #96 in	Books > Teens > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars too "modern" ideas were inserted in Betsy , November 19, 2005

By	Bibliophile "Fitzpatrick" - See all my reviews

It will appeal to young female teens but the historical setting and female perspective will alienate many teens, especially reluctant readers. Also I several issues with the story itself: first it was slow reading until the middle, second even though it is historical fiction I felt that too many "modern" ideas were inserted in Betsy and several of the other characters, some of those issues would not have been dealt with in that matter, especially the frankness of sex and premarital sex, at that, lastly the lack of historical accuracy when dealing with actual events and people always poses an issue with me. I feel that there should be some responsibility and accountability for truth even in fiction; particularly when Betsy attempts to help "Boney" escape even at the cost of another's life, the author even admits that there is no evidence for this.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Betsy Balcombe and the Emperor of Doom, September 30, 2005

By	Tom Holmberg "tholmberg" (Hoffman Ests., IL USA) - See all my reviews

This new young adult (YA) novel is a historical fantasy based on Napoleon's earliest years on St. Helena. Ms. Rabin has reimagined Napoleon's exile through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Betsy Balcombe, the tomboyish daughter of a British official living on the distant South Atlantic island.

Freshly returned to St. Helena from a boarding school in England, Betsy, while on one of her adventures, sees the arrival of a ship in the island's port of Jamestown. Investigating the commotion -Are pirates raiding the port? -Is the island being invaded? -Betsy discovers that, in a way, there is an invasion.

Napoleon has landed, but as a prisoner of the British; isolated on a tiny, rocky island in the back of beyond and guarded by more than 2000 British troops and a small fleet of warships. Betsy discovers that Napoleon has come to the Balcombe's home, known as The Briars, to live. Betsy and General Bonaparte, as the British insist on calling him, are about to find their lives intersecting. Eventually they will enter into a sort of conspiracy together.

From the first Napoleon plays both the ogre-a role Napoleon, at times, seems to revel in-and the aggrieved ex-Emperor. Betsy, recently released from her own prison of a English boarding school, finds herself, in a sense, in just a bigger prison formed of both the size of the an island that Napoleon once described as "petit" and by the expectations of those around her towards a girl entering into young womanhood. As Betsy says, she was "not at all aspiring to proper young ladyhood."

Betsy, at first, is unimpressed by the former conqueror, but Napoleon, employing the charm he was reported of being capable of, eventually wins Betsy over. Betsy is unimpressed with Napoleon's glory, considering him as a "man who had brought so much misery upon the world. Who never did anything of value, nor gave a thought to anyone but himself." To Betsy, whose fellow students at school had lost fathers and brothers in the wars, Napoleon is little more than a "professional murderer." As Betsy spends more time with the new arrival and learns more about Napoleon her opinion of her fellow prisoner begins to change.

For his part, Napoleon at first teases the teenaged girl, calling her "monsieur" when he catches her riding astride rather than the sidesaddle proper for a young woman. But Napoleon sees Betsy (perhaps as he saw himself around Betsy's age) as someone who is "trapped... like a good actress in a very bad play. You dream [he tells her] of doing great things, but no one expects it of you. Your heart aches to break free-and write your own destiny on the wind... someday they will see what they have missed in you-you will make them see. And they will be sorry." Gradually the rebellious Betsy, whose older sister is one of those who Betsy wants to make sorry, begins to have some grudging admiration for the rebellious general.

Under the influence of the Balcombe family's half-mad, half-French tutor, Huff, Betsy enters into an ambitious conspiracy to free her new friend-unbeknownst to Napoleon. In a way Napoleon's escape from his prison would be an escape of Betsy from her own confinement. "But risk my life," she vows, "I would do again -and again- if it would help set him free."

At the same time Napoleon conspires to assist Betsy in her first tentative steps into adult social life, as Betsy experiences her first crush on a handsome British officer. The arrival of the island's new governor -and Napoleon's new jailer- Hudson Lowe marks the appearance in the plot of a villain who disrupts the lives of both Betsy and Napoleon.

Rabin presents her heroine as a tomboyish girl struggling with her approaching adulthood. Betsy is lively, independent and adventurous. Napoleon is presented as a complicated mixture of playfulness and ruthlessness. He enjoys teasing Betsy and playing games with Betsy's little brothers, but also is involved in a much more serious game with his British captors.

Rabin has not tried to recreate the actual events of Napoleon's captivity, though most of the characters are historical. Rabin admits in the "Source Notes" that she avoided reading the real Betsy Balcombe's memoir of her life on St. Helena before finishing the novel. Instead Rabin has created a historical fantasy of adventure narrated by a teenaged Betsy of her own imagining.

Rabin includes, besides the "Source Notes," a "Geographical Note" on the island of St. Helena and historical notes on the Code Napoléon and on French anthem, La Marseillaise. A contemporary map of St. Helena and portraits of Napoleon and of Betsy as an adult are also included.

Staton Rabin is an author of young adult books, as well as screenwriter, so it is no surprise that Betsy and the Emperor has been option for a movie, with Al Pacino mentioned in the role of Napoleon.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book, November 13, 2004

By	Sandra Gingras - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a wonderful book. I would recommend it for both adult and young adult readers. Even you don't care a hoot about Napoleon or about history, for that matter, you will swept away by this novel. Betsy is everything you want a 14 year old girl to be, sassy and bright and intuitive and rebellious. Napoleon is, well, Napoleon...a huge historical figure, but wrought here in a way that renders him entirely human (and a fascinating person at that). Staton Rabin takes facts and fiction and blends them up in this novel into a wonderful mix, more true than truth in the end (which is what great fiction does). This is such an interesting novel. It cooks along and is entirely quirky and compelling--just as a "coming of age" story for Betsy. But it is so much more than that. It is about how the grand scale of history is tipped every day by the ordinary, how huge historical figures are, in the end, simply human. It is fast paced, well written, funny, moving, quirky and wild. It is a pleasure to be in Staton Rabin's head and in her heart and in the world that she creates with this book. This is a gem of a novel. I'm giving it to some great young adults that I know (who will eat it up!). I'm also passing it along to some adults that I know will relish it!