School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9-Despite an attractive format with plentiful full-color and black-and-white photos, these biographies are bland. They do an adequate job of covering the facts, but there's no life to the women's stories, no spark or flair to the writing. The authors place far more emphasis on actions than on personality and motivations. Catherine is the weakest title; it's a struggle to grasp who she really was, or to care about her (and how did she occupy herself in between historical happenings?). This book also has the largest number of footnoting issues (punctuation, capitalization, missing words, citations to the wrong book/page, etc.). Bhutto and Noor are the best of the bunch. All of the titles have minor errors and omissions and sometimes awkward writing. They do include maps (highly abbreviated), glossaries, time lines, and lists for further reading. A case could be made for adding Bhutto and Noor; it is harder to justify Catherine or Per-n.-Ann W. Moore, Schenectady County Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6-9. This admiring Signature Lives biography, part of the new Modern World subseries, tells the intriguing story of Queen Noor, the American-born woman who reigned alongside Jordan's King Hussein. Raatma opens with Princeton graduate Lisa Halaby's introduction to the much older king, precipitating her whirlwind transformation to Noor al Hussein (light of Hussein ) in only three months. Was this a fairy tale? asks Raatma. Far from it. The coming years held challenges stemming from both Middle East turmoil and the Jordanian people, who dismissed Noor as a materialistic American. It's easy to get bogged down in the complicated political details, and most quotations (the only material documented) come from Noor's autobiography for adults, Leap of Faith (2003)--hardly an unbiased source. But the perspective of an American who became a Middle East insider is a valuable one, and many readers--in spite of Raatma's admonishments--will find the fairy-tale elements irresistible. Appended material includes a time line, further reading suggestions, endnotes, and directions for accessing Web links through a publisher-maintained portal. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2006 Booklist
