Hi all!
This is kind of a departure from my usual posts in a way, however, I loved this series when I was younger and am in the process of getting hold of more of the titles. The Royal Diaries Series came from the Dear America Books and became quite popular in the early 2000s. Written by various different orders, each one was written as the fictional journal of a real life princess, there were countless books in the series and I used to borrow them from our local library in primary school.
I only have two of them at the moment:
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The two titles I have are Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess and Elisabeth: The Princess Bride. I loved these books as a kid, not only because I was a history buff; but also because they featured pretty gilded pages.
I also read:
I also read:
Victoria: The May Blossom of Britannia and Kaiulani: The People's Princess
(Hopefully I'll buy myself some copies real soon, since these were also favourites of mine!)
These ones also come highly recommended:
They've since been repackaged (in a way that I am not fond of, haha) and look like so:
I just don't think they are nearly as inviting as the 2002 versions - no guilded pages! But I do think they're great books for young girls who are passionate about history.
I think the problem with these sorts of books is that they are "princess books", with the socio-political baggage that that entails. As a little girl, I had the June and Schoolfriend 2nd Book of Heroines, which, while it included some princesses/queens, also had (albeit sanitised) accounts of Suzanne Valadon, Georges Sand, Constance Markiewicz and the Brontës. The 'princess' fixation panders to a 'Hello!' magazine view of the past, which I regard as problematic in a different way to the 'Horrible Histories' turning it into a point-and-laugh/gross-out freak-show. Children can grow up with a passion for history and love of historical characters without these clichéd approaches. I used to read my Dad's copy of Gods, Graves and Scholars and visit the local archaeology museum: I regarded the young man in an Iron Age chariot burial as a 'friend'.
ReplyDeleteI actually don't feel that its particularly damning for children to read these. I could tell these were works of fiction as a child, however, what they did provide was the curiosity to explore the true stories with great vigour. Of course there is potential for them to be regarded as saccharine and verging on disrespectful. But I don't think that is the intent nor does it dismiss the true stories of women around the world. What it does do is create a spark of curiousity to explore the history of the past. Its important to encourage an interest in the past, so I won't be seen disregarding any avenue.
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