- Madame Saqui: Revolutionary Rope Dancer by Lisa Robinson
Library ed. ISBN 978-0-525-57998-4 $20.99
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-525-57997-7 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-525-57999-1 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R 5-8 yrs
Marguerite-Antoinette Lalanne, daughter of tightrope walkers in late eighteenth-century Paris, was allowed only to flip and tumble and cartwheel during the act, not to learn her parents’ skill. However, when her father was injured and family fortunes declined during the French Revolution, young Marguerite took lessons on the sly from a colleague of her parents and became a billed act in her own right, much to her parents’ initial horror. The income was needed, though, so the Lalannes started their own traveling circus. Marguerite would eventually marry a fellow acrobat, perform under her new name Madame Saqui, and gain fame and the patronage of Emperor Napoleon himself, dancing the rope into her seventies. This riveting picture book biography shines both for Robinson’s pitch-perfect readaloud text and Green’s mural-like artwork, rendered in an age-muted palette of Revolutionary France’s red, white, and blue. Children familiar with the exploits of contemporary rope master Philippe Petit may be surprised to learn Marguerite had walked between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral nearly two centuries earlier, and those who aren’t should acquire, posthaste, a copy of Gerstein’s The Man Who Walked between the Towers (BCCB 12/03).