PRINCESS DIANA

A sugary profile of the people’s princess.

Aptly timed, considering the recent British succession, this sanitized portrait of the late royal leaves out her various affairs and much else but does highlight her later advocacy for AIDS victim relief and minefield clearing, among other social causes. Even more than usual in her Little People, BIG DREAMS series, Sánchez Vegara really lays on the gooey prose—beginning with accounts of Diana’s birth as not the hoped-for son but still “such a breath of joy that she became the apple of her father’s eye” and her practice of bestowing hugs on her younger brother, Charles, that “were filled with the love that a kid needs to grow.” From there it was on to a school award for, according to the accompanying illustration, “Kindest Girl,” the royal wedding, subsequent bouts of bulimia (described in discomfiting detail) at the discovery that her husband’s “heart belonged to someone else,” and divorce. But “little Diana never regretted leaving the palace to follow her own path: the path of a true princess who—by opening herself up to others—became a queen in people’s hearts.” Mention of her death is relegated to a line in the afterword. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Even for this series, a particularly cloying entry.