Moi and Marie Antoinette

It is not clear to me who will read this picture book. The story of Marie Antoinette will not be familiar to a picture book readership and the message of a doomed queen only wishing for happiness is perhaps a little too grown up for them, and children knowing her fate will be beyond picture books. The ‘Moi’ of the title is a little dog that Marie Antoinette took with her when she left Austria to marry the heir to the French throne, and the dog, cast aside at first, then becomes the friend of her daughter in turn. The very sugary pastel illustrations and the use of ‘Moi’ so often are not in keeping with the tragedy of a girl used as a pawn and murdered for her position which was in the end the only path open to her.