Catherine de' Medici: The Black Queen

by Janie Havemeyer (Author) Peter Malone (Illustrator)

Catherine de' Medici: The Black Queen
Queen of France, Catherine de' Medici would do anything to keep her family in power, including using poison and black magic. A nation-wide killing spree during her rule earned her the name, The Black Queen. But was she really that bad?

Gorgeous illustrations and an intelligent, evocative story bring to life a real dastardly dame who fought to keep her children in power, but ended up blackening their names instead.
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School Library Journal

Gr 4-8--One of the most unique offerings this season, this series presents tales of women throughout history who have not followed societal conventions. Spanning various centuries and continents, the books outline the lives, actions, and misdeeds of women who held positions of great power. The pages have a collagelike appearance, with blocks of texts and captioned photos and reproductions. Sidebars give contextual information, such as "What she played," "What she wore," "What she ate," etc. Readers will find the information engrossing, with stories of dastardly deeds such as poisoning, religious persecution, and outright murder. However, it should be noted that these books have no index, table of contents, or bibliography, so they might be better suited for browsing than for research. Students will question whether or not these women were really inherently evil, or just acting in response to their dysfunctional childhoods and the turbulent times in which they lived.

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Janie Havemeyer
Janie Havemeyer has worked as a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, an elementary school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a social studies curriculum designer. For the past six years, she has been working as a literacy tutor. She writes narrative, nonfiction picture books for children, and is busy thinking about the next eccentric character whose story she wants to tell.
Janie is the author of Catherine de' Medici "The Black Queen," and Njinga "The Warrior Queen," both in The Thinking Girl's Treasury of Dastardly Dames.

Peter Malone has illustrated over twenty children's books for such publishers as Chronicle, Knopf, Putnam, Running Press, and Scholastic. In addition to creating gorgeous illustrations, he wrote the book, Close to the Wind, about the use of the Beaufort scale for measuring wind force at sea. School Library Journal called it "informative and utterly charming." He lives in Bath, England, with his wife, a restorer of paintings, and their two grown daughters.
Classification
Non-fiction
ISBN-13
9780983425632
Lexile Measure
950
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Goosebottom Books
Publication date
October 20, 2011
Series
Thinking Girl's Treasury of Dastardly Dames
BISAC categories
JNF007020 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Biography & Autobiography | Historical
JNF007120 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Biography & Autobiography | Women
Library of Congress categories
History
France
Kings, queens, rulers, etc
16th century
Queens
Catherine de Medicis
Mothers of kings and rulers
Reformation
Independent Publisher Book Awards
Silver Medal Winner 2012 - 2012

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