["Queen Victoria"] will hold young people's interest from beginning to end. It not only gives the outward facts of Victoria's life, without fictionalizing, but attempts to suggest the elements in her character and upbringing which influenced her as a queen, and by brief comments on her relations with Melbourne, Disraeli and Gladstone to make readers aware, if only in an elementary way, of the part played by the Crown in British government. Particularly valuable are the quotations from the magazines of the day, from the Queen's own diary and reminiscences, and from her letters and those of her Uncle Leopold. Girls old enough to remember seeing on television or in the movies the ceremonies of the coronation of Elizabeth II will be especially interested in the curiously lifeless account Victoria gives of hers. This is a book one might suggest to girls who have enjoyed the simpler, more...