MARIE ANTOINETTE

The ill-fated queen of France takes
center stage in a beginner’s biography.

As a subject of a biography for
preschoolers and early-elementary readers, Marie Antoinette, a woman who is
known for the probably apocryphal “Let them eat cake!” and for her execution by
guillotine during the French Revolution, is a curious choice. Berenger (not a
person but a French media collective) introduces her as an Austrian princess
married off to a French prince as part of a peace negotiation. At 18, she is
crowned at Reims with her husband, Louis XVI, and she proceeds to “insist on
the finest of everything….She hired hairdressers to change her hairstyle every
day!” But “meanwhile, many people in France were poor and starving,” so “they
decided to overthrow their king and queen!” The hopelessly simplistic account
proceeds through the royal couple’s imprisonment, Louis’ execution (framed by
the guillotine, he looks worriedly out at readers), the confiscation of her
son, and her trial (depicted) and execution (not). Backmatter includes further
information, which mostly muddies the waters rather than clearing them,
introducing Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in a three-sentence thumbnail
and presenting a complicated map of Europe that may be of more use to the
volume’s original French readers than to North American ones. The bobbleheaded
cartoons, all white, look by turns happy, anxious, and angry; they are at all
times vapid. Companion title Buddha
is equally inadequate.

Laughably undercontextualized and
not particularly interesting, despite the decapitations. (Picture book/biography. 4-7)