Reviews

Eleanor of Aquitaine by Zoe Kaplan

jkneebone's review

informative medium-paced

3.0

What an interesting biography! I picked it up because I had to read a biography for a reading challenge, and I didn't know anything about Eleanor of Aquitaine but she sounded interesting. And she is! Married to two kings, mother to two more, she lived into her 80s in the 12th century (after having given birth to ten children)! A really fascinating historical figure, I'm glad I learned about her. In terms of the biography, this is a pretty basic middle school/young high school-level read. Probably not meant to be read cover to cover so much as used as a research source, but it was still pretty readable - everything was written in a narrative style. I found the photos/images and descriptions distracting, because I felt like I had to read them but a lot of times they were only tangentially related to the actual writing (because there aren't any portraits of Eleanor, I assume). So I didn't love the formatting, but it was still a good read.