Product Description

Join Queen Elizabeth I on her annual summer procession through the English countryside in this majestically illustrated alphabet. With an A for Adventure, the queen leaves London for an extraordinary holiday among her people. Feast on blackbird pie, join the royal hunting party, and cheer on your favorite knights as they joust for the queen's favor. But watch out! T is for Treason. Traitors trail in the queen's path and it's up to her bravest and most loyal subjects to keep her from harm! Playful, rhyming verse, fascinating notes about each topic, and lavishly detailed pictures make this delightful romp through Elizabethan England a pleasure to read again and again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #862480 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 3-7-Set against the backdrop of the queen's annual "royal progress," this sumptuous picture book details the common occurrences that the monarch, her courtiers, and servants faced each summer as they roamed the English countryside-a time of relaxation for the queen but one of constant vigilance for her staff. Each letter of the alphabet gives a tidbit of information through a four-line rhyme, expounded on in an accompanying paragraph of prose text. While rhymes for two of the letters are quite forced, most are well penned. Some are light and fanciful, while others have a more serious tone. Unfamiliar vocabulary may challenge some students ("turncoats," "bevy," "gambols"), but the narrative is so interesting that they are not likely to be deterred by it. Ibatoulline's acrylic paintings are superb in their elegance and fascinating in their detail. Elizabeth's ornate gowns and her courtly accoutrements are delightfully offset by her servants' plain garb and earnest expressions, and there are many humorous touches. Large letters are rendered in fancy script and decorated in a gold scroll motif. This book could be used as an introduction to Elizabethan history, or it could serve as a model for creating alphabet books based on historical time periods. A plus for any collection.
Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 2-4. This alphabetically arranged, large-format picture book has a prose text that informs children about Queen Elizabeth I's annual royal progresses through England with her entourage. Meanwhile, a separate text keyed to the alphabet and in rhymed couplets (and larger type) dramatizes a particular summer progress in which a young kitchen maid helps foil a plan to assassinate the queen. If that seems a heavy load for a picture book, even one for older children, it is, but those with a taste for Elizabethan history and handsome illustrations evoking the period should find it intriguing. Ibatoulline excels at painting ornate Elizabethan fabrics and clothing in exquisite detail, so her series of richly colored, narrative paintings extend the text in an entertaining way. The alphabet element is simply a construct, but the jacket flap copy seems to reveal its origin: Mannis says that she had written more than 1,000 pages of a historical novel when she was advised to turn it into a picture book. This is it. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Erudite and absorbing. . . . -- Publishers Weekly

Customer Reviews

A published rough draft
Great idea. Bring the Elizabethan period closer by linking it with an alphabet book and factoids that interest children.

Lovely illustrations.

Now the bad part. Embarrassingly lazy rhymes, from the Moody Blues school of songwriting.

G is for garden,
And in it a maze.
Through a tangle of hedgerows
The queen makes her way

(You could have said, To be lost there for days, Making several ways, With their heads in a daze--so many real rhymes would have worked.)

Unfortunately, many of the "rhymes" are like that. They are awkward but could have easily been made right. The meter is also not quite right, which is too bad, because this has so much to offer.

The book would have worked better without the poems, because the pictures and the historical notes are so good.

God Save the Queen!
British history nuts will get a kick out of this book. Fun for all ages! My kids love following the adventures of the little dog that appears on almost every page, and soaking up all the incredible detail that Ibatoulline crammed into his exquisite illustrations. There's a lot going on - a visual feast fit for a...Queen! As a certified Anglophile, I'm fascinated by the narrative at the bottom of each page, and the sometimes sassy, sometimes whimsical verse that moves along the 'story within a story'. Very unusual, very good! God Save the Queen!

A Regal Book
Celest Davidson Mannis and Bagram Ibatoulline combine the genres of alphabet books and historical picture books and take both to new heights.

Each page presents a different letter, with the ornate, scrolly letter taking up most of the page. Clever quatrains about the featured letter are accompanied by a small chunk of text that further explains the significance of what's been described in the quatrain -- for example, X is for xanthus, and though the brief rhymed poem explains what a xanthus is, the prose at the bottom of the page offers historical information that justifies its inclusion in the book.

The illustrations are exquisite. I've been a fan of Ibatoulline's work for some time now, and the pictures in this book are period-perfect, with colors that bring to mind an illuminated manuscript.

It's also fun to go through each picture and try to find the page, the maid, and the dwarf who play important parts in the adventure story that is skillfully woven into the poems and prose.

This book works on so many different levels, older children and adults will find much to learn and enjoy here.