MOI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE by Lynn Cullen

4.00 Stars from 39 GoodReaders 

Review by Don

This is a cute but rather odd little book about Marie Antoinette that is told from by her pet pug, Sébastien.  Sébastien is a very spoiled and self centered little dog, as of course was his young mistress.

Now we need to pause here and consider a couple of things. First, the author has taken great liberty in her account of history, which from this aspect, the book is quite flawed. Secondly, when reading this to young children, be prepared to tell them the rest of the story, as I guarantee they will ask; I know as I have been there and done that with a couple groups of children. There is always at least one in the group, even at the first and second grade level, that is somewhat aware of Antoinette’s ultimate fate

That being said, this is a cute read. The use of the sardonic and spoiled dog allows the author to take some pretty nice shots at the French Court of that time and some of the personalities involved. Now I have always felt that Marie was sort of dealt a bad hand right from the start, but history is history and we sort of have to live with that. If you know pugs, you will see that the author also knows them.

The illustrations in this work are good. They are not the style that is a favorite of mine, but the kids seem to like it well enough and that is what really counts in a child’s book. The various pictures go from quite detailed to quite general and you do get a good feeling of what is going on through them as they go perfectly with the text. These are actually some very nice and mellow water colors here which are very well executed.

Now I would normally down grade this work as I truly dislike books, even children’s books that take too much liberty with history. The little dog and the authors humor shines through on this one though, so rather than take myself too serious, I will just chalk this up to a nice really, really fictionalized historical story and leave it as that. The kids like it, especially the little girls, and as I said, that is what counts.

~Don


MOI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
by Lynn Cullen
Amy Young (Illustrator)

4.00 avg rating — 39 GoodReaders

Word Count: 1,512
Page Count: 32
Accelerated Reading level: 3.6  / points: 0.5
AR quiz: 113890
--samples pages available

updated August 2013