When her sister seizes the throne, Queen Eleanor of Albion is banished to a tiny
island off the coast of her kingdom, where the nuns of the convent spend their days
peacefully praying, sewing, and gardening. But the island is also home to Margaret, a
mysterious young orphan girl whose life is upturned when the cold, regal stranger
arrives. As Margaret grows closer to Eleanor, she grapples with the revelation of the
island’s sinister true purpose as well as the truth of her own past. When Eleanor’s life
is threatened, Margaret is faced with a perilous choice between helping Eleanor and
protecting herself. In a hybrid novel of fictionalized history, Dylan Meconis paints
Margaret’s world in soft greens, grays, and reds, transporting readers to a quiet,
windswept island at the heart of a treasonous royal plot.
Author’s note. Full-color mixed-media illustrations.
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In a graphic novel loosely inspired by sixteenth-century British history “during the reigns of King Henry VIII and his daughters, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I,” young Margaret has lived on the Island in a convent of nuns since she was a baby. At almost twelve (and nearly one hundred pages into the story), Margaret discovers an unhappy secret about her beloved Island and her own status there: she is in fact a prisoner. Soon after, the Island receives Lady Eleanor, the queen of Albion (modeled after Elizabeth I), who has been deposed by her older half-sister Catherine. Distrustful of everyone else on the Island, Eleanor enlists Margaret as a companion, but this relationship eventually leads to another startling revelation, this time about Margaret’s parentage. When a mysterious ship washes ashore, its sole survivor alters the course of Margaret’s and Eleanor’s futures as they escape the Island together, in an open-ended conclusion. Sympathetic protagonist Margaret’s first-person narration occasionally pauses to enlighten modern young readers about religious practices, politics, and conventions of the period, such as convent holy hours, saints, and the rules of chess. These sections are often accom-panied by spot art resembling images in illuminated manuscripts, whereas the rest of Meconis’s angular, detailed drawings depict characters realistically. Throughout, the mixed-media illustrations in an earthy palette are a dynamic mix of panel sizes and shapes that—along with the speech-bubble dialogue—reflect the emotions, intrigue, and actions of the complex characters, to great cinematic effect.