Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 (The Royal Diaries)

by The Royal Diaries

Hardcover, 2005

Status

Available

Local notes

Fic Roy

Barcode

6682

Publication

Scholastic Inc. (2005), 192 pages

Description

Beginning in 1490, Anacaona keeps a record of her life as a possible successor to the supreme chief of Xaragua, as wife of the chief of Maguana, and as a warrior battling the first white men to arrive in the West Indies, ravenous for gold.

Language

English

Original language

English

Original publication date

2005-04

Physical description

7.5 inches

User reviews

LibraryThing member AngelaB86

Historical fiction, a diary account of Princess Anacaona, who lived in Haiti at the time of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the islands. The author does a wonderful job of describing the daily life and rituals of Anacaona's people.

One feature of the Royal Diaries series is once the story is

finished, the author includes a section which is only facts: pictures/portraits of the main characters, family trees, a "What life was like in (insert name) lived" to help the reader distinguish between what we know about the characters, what we assume from artifacts found, and what the author made up to help the story along.

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LibraryThing member padame

The pale men have reached her shores. they were awakened at dawn by clamorous shouts of voices unlike any she has ever hear and the sight of men unlike any she ase ever seen… As her husband Caonabo and her emerged from there house…they immediately surrounded the plaza…to point hollow-looking

metal sticks at them. From theses sticks they fired bursts of lightening into the air, which startled and frightened there people, forcing many to flee.
his eyes darting between the pale men’s lightning and there men running, Caonabo ordered our fighters to stand still. This did o good, for as There men kept fleeing, the pale men went on aiming their lightening rods at the clouds…It was if they were at war with gods.

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LibraryThing member andreablythe

The Royal Diaries is a series of books presenting the imagined diaries of various princesses. In this case, it is the tale of Anacaona, a Taíno cacique (chief), who is also a warrior, a poet, a leader, and a diplomat.

While learning about this woman was certainly fascinating, the book was very

tame. This is to be expected since the desired audience is younger preteen girls -- my sister was a big fan of the series when she was in Junior High -- and I probably would not have picked it up were it not written by Edwidge Danticat.

She does what she can with diary format (difficult as the Taíno had no written language). The writing was clean and precise, but unfortunately, also had that educational, now-you-are-learning-something-about-history-in-story-format feel to it, which is hard to avoid in books like this. Not a bad book for girls interested in princesses, and it definitely sparked enough of my interest in Anacaona that I would be willing to go learn more about her (which I suppose is partly the point).

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