retail therapy: Raucously Royal — with a giveaway!

It’s been a loooong time since my last retail therapy post. Well, I guess I have been kind of busy, with Doomed Queens and all. But with the holidays before us, it seems time to resurrect it. Plus, with the Doomed Queens blog tour underway, a host of wonderful new websites and books have come to my attention. (More on the Doomed Queens blog tour in a future post.)

One of these books is The Raucous Royals, which is given life by the prodigiously talented Carlyn Beccia. Beccia wrote, illustrated and designed The Raucous Royals. Accordingly, the book has a remarkable integration between text, design and art — something close to my heart, as anyone who knows my work would concur. The book is designed to look like part tabloid magazine, part graphic novel, part Ye Olde Master homage. Frankly, I’m amazed to learn that this is only Beccia’s second picture book; her debut was Who Put the B in Ballyhoo?, a circus-inspired alphabet.

(Yes, technically these are picture books marketed to children. But I think they’re really for any age — beautifully illustrated books are ageless — though The Raucous Royals is definitely slanted to an older audience than Ballyhoo. Figure kids over eight.)

The core of The Raucous Royals is how history is “a Distillation of Rumors.”* Beccia writes: “Once a rumor is born, it never truly dies. Before television, tabloid magazines, and the Internet, rumors about royalty were started by clever jingles, silly cartoons, small books called pamphlets, and simple word of mouth.” From there, she deconstructs over a dozen rumors from the last five hundred years, starting with Vlad the Impader and finishing with England’s unfortunate George III.

It’s a fun romp, made all the livelier by Beccia’s knowing wit and clever art. All the wives of Henry VIII are there, including Anne Boleyn and her supposed sixth finger. Elizabeth and her cousin Mary Stuart are presented in a Rashomon-like format. I especially liked Beccia’s explanations of some of the stranger health obsessions of times past, such as “The Boil Butt Beautifier.” Apparently Louis XIV was prone to nasty boils on his… well, you get the idea!

A few rumors are lightly glossed over because of the juvenile market constraint. For example, Beccia plays coy in her presentation of Catherine the Great’s supposed death-by-horse. The rumor she offers: “Catherine the great empress of Russia, died after being crushed by her horse.” Um, well, only half the story there. But how else could you explain this to a G-rated audience without tipping toward a racy R rating? It’s a tricky thing — and this is one tale from history that is just too juicy to leave out.

I think The Raucous Royals would make a delectable gift for any history fan, especially if they’re on the younger side. I know if I’d had this book as a kid, I would eaten it up like coffee ice cream, my favorite childhood treat. So highly recommended for the holidays and beyond. I can imagine many a juicy school report being fueled by it. You can purchase it here.

Oh, and for the illustrators reading along, FYI: Beccia’s illustrations were created in Corel Painter and Photoshop, using a Wacom Cintiq. She has an art blog, in which she offers up some of her techniques — a great resource for anyone wanting to know “how’d she do that? — as well as art tutorials on The Raucous Royals official site.

Here’s the giveaway part: Win a copy of The Raucous Royals! Carlyn Beccia is generously offering us an autographed copy of as a giveaway. It will be raffled off in my next author newsletter, which is going out Wednesday. To be eligible for the Raucous Royal giveaway, enter your e-mail at the top of this page by Wednesday 12pm EST.

And may the most deserving subscriber win.

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* Quote from Thomas Carlyle, 1795 – 1881.

Art © 2008 from The Raucous Royals: Test your Royal Wits: Crack Codes, Solve Mysteries, and Deduce Which Royal Rumors are True by Carlyn Beccia. Published by Houghton Mifflin, October 2008. All rights reserved.

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