The Lacemaker and the Princess
by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Author)
Eleven-year-old Isabelle is a lace maker in the town of Versailles. One day as she delivers lace to the palace, she is almost trampled by a crowd of courtiers -- only to be rescued by Marie Antoinette. Before Isabelle can believe it, she has a new job -- companion to the queen's daughter. Isabelle is given a fashionable name, fashionable dresses -- a new identity. At home she plies her needle under her grandmother's disapproving eye. At the palace she is playmate to a princess. Thrown into a world of luxury, Isabelle is living a fairy-tale life. But this facade begins to crumble when rumors of starvation in the countryside lead to whispers of revolution. How can Isabelle reconcile the ugly things she hears in the town with the kind family she knows in the palace? And which side is she truly on?
Inspired by an actual friendship between the French princess and a commoner who became her companion, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley offers a vivid portrait of life inside the palace of Versailles -- and a touching tale of two friends divided by class and the hunger for equality and freedom that fueled the French Revolution.
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Hornbook
Isabelle, entranced by palace life and ashamed of her meager home, must choose between the two, as the French Revolution nears. Though politics occasionally obscures plot, details of life at Versailles enrich the story.
Kirkus
Endnotes explain that Ernestine actually did live at Versailles as companion to Thèrése, though many of the other characters in the story are fictitious. Fascinating.
School Library Journal
Isabelle Bonnard is an 11-year-old lacemaker living near the palace of Versailles. One day, while delivering lace to the palace, she is discovered by Marie Antoinette and taken to be a companion to the queen's young daughter. Therese provides her with all the luxuries of court life, but Isabelle is torn between her loyalties to her new friend and to her barely surviving mother and grandmother at home. As threats against the royal family increase, Isabelle sees the unfolding drama through her fresh and increasingly less naive eyes. The author vividly evokes the appalling lack of sanitary facilities, the crowds of vagrants and hangers-on overrunning the palace, the differences within the French social classes, and Louis XVI's fatal dithering when confronted with the National Guard. Isabelle's brother, a groom in the Marquis de Lafayette's stables, supplies the revolutionary perspective. This richly detailed story provides a sympathetic, well-balanced view of this period. An author's note reinforces the credibility of Isabelle's "adoption" by the royal family. A fascinating and well-researched look at 18th-century France.
Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
JUV016040 - Juvenile Fiction | Historical | Europe
JUV034000 - Juvenile Fiction | Royalty (kings queens princes princesses knights etc.)
