TITLE: Queen of the Sea
by Dylan Meconis (Walker Books, 2019), 394 pages, $24.99
STORY: A red-haired girl grows up in a convent on an island in a dangerous sea, happily unaware she's a prisoner among equally imprisoned nuns — until two new captives arrive. The first is an attractive boy with news about the death of the distant king and the bloody rise of his daughter Queen Catherine.
The second is Catherine's half-sister, Eleanor, a regal, hot-tempered, terrified redhead in the clutches of a cruel nun.
Eleanor and Catherine are not the only royal sisters in this engaging graphic novel inspired by the 16th-century arrest of the future Queen Elizabeth I of England by her paranoid sister, Mary. King Edmund had another, secret daughter, and it is possible she's alive only because her sisters don't know she exists.
With charming and often funny drawings and detail-laden text, little Margaret gives readers an education in medieval convent life, while her formerly staid world turns upside down.
The convent venerates one St. Elysia, who either rowed out to sea after speaking to a fisherman or spoke to a fisherman and then turned into a fish. Elysia saves drowning people — and could be a good friend for a hidden princess to cling to when her ship comes in.
Read to Me is a weekly review of quick reads.
Style on 06/24/2019