Friday, June 6, 2008

The Redheaded Princess by Ann Rinaldi

"One thing I have learned in this life: It is never good when you hear a horse galloping up to your home in the middle of the day or night."

Abstract: In 1542, nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near ...

The full abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full abstract, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and the full abstract will magically appear.

Full Abstract: In 1542, nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near London, striving to get back into the good graces of her father, King Henry VIII, and as the years pass she faces his death and those of other close relatives until she finds herself next in line to ascend the throne of England in 1558.

Publisher: HarperCollins; 214 pages

15 comments:

Teresa said...

How cool is that?! Just clicking and scrolling on that blank space! Did you just change the text color to white?

Mary said...

Yep. White text on white background is effectively invisible! (Or invisible until you highlight it.) WO0-HOO! What a simple solution!

Kris said...

I agree - VERY cool! I couldn't resist it!

Teresa said...

Those who don't want spoilers will need to avoid using the RSS feed. At least the RSS feed I use seems to ignore text color and displays it.

Jen said...

I really love that.

Genie Bishop said...

I think this is a great solution to the concerns about spoilers in the abstracts and it is cool.

Mary said...

Thanks, you guys! (I went through and made the rest of the abstracts invisible last night.) And Teresa, my Bloglines RSS feed doesn't show the abstracts. Which feed do you use?

Teresa said...

I use the feed associated with my Safari browser on my computer. It doesn't travel with me from computer to computer. I can change this blog's feed to my Google Reader if I find it an issue. Usually, when I notice that there's a new entry, I go to the actual site anyway just so I can see comments.

Anonymous said...

I loved this book! I could not put it down. It had so many twists and turns. It really is a great story, and the history lesson is an added bonus. It had lots of adventure and suspense to it also.

Beth said...

Ann Rinaldi has a knack for making history interesting and accessible. This is one of her better works, in my opinion. It was wonderfully well written, and hinted at the sketchier portions of the history without going in depth. Very well done.

Kris said...

Elizabeth is one of my favorite historical figures; I've read several books about her. This one was very well done. Being a princess was no Disney fairy tale! The author did a great job not only bringing Elizabeth to life, but the time period as a whole. Great historical fiction.

Unknown said...

I enjoyed this book. I too have been fascinated with Elizabeth - it was fun to picture her as a young woman.

Jen said...

OK, I have finally read the book and can comment on more than the trick of hiding the abstract...

Rinaldi has once again brought history to life in a way that can do more than spice up a unit study-- it's simply makes interesting reading. And while I don't think it's "the one", I thought it covered historical (and some highly personal) portions discreetly,with just enough information.

kmg365 said...

I'm not a fan of historical fiction in general, but I am an Anglophile, and having read Rinaldi's Nine Days Queen, I was eager to read this one. As someone else hinted, anything that demonstrates to children that being a princess is nothing like Disney would have us believe is a Good Thing. Well written, and it did not read like a history lesson-- also a Good Thing.

Heather said...

Good historical fiction that I couldn't put down. It didn't strike me as particularly distinguished among this year's books, but it was a good one.

Now I want to read Nine Days Queen!