I am a Royal Rulebreaker: Women Who Shaped History

To describe this book simply I’d say it is an older readers version of the Fantastically Great Women series by Kate Pankhurst. Ideal for secondary school-aged readers, it explores a wide range of female rulers from across the world and how they defied the norm. 

The women range from princesses to queens to empresses and either feature on their own with a spread or two to detail their life and why their rebellious nature is worth celebrating, or in section dedicated to a collection of women under a theme such as women who didn’t want to marry, women who stole the limelight and women who fought in battles. These sections, along with a couple of introductory ones near the start of the book, help to give more historical context to the time periods or issues being discussed. 

Some of the women readers may already be familiar with like Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth I and Cleopatra for example, so the book works nicely in terms of the curriculum topics and building on that knowledge. But some of the women may be refreshingly new to them like Cixi a Chinese Empress who started court life as a concubine and rose to be Empress, potentially poisoning a few people along the way, and Queen Salote of Tonga, who escaped death twice and caused intrigue when she attended Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation. 

In terms of design it’s beautifully illustrated by Taylor Dolan and the pages are colourful and bright without detracting from the text itself which is broken into sections to make it more accessible. 

Overall, this would be a great book to pour over and devour page-by-page or dip into to read more about a woman the reader admires. It would be a real asset to any school or public library setting where women in history are celebrated.