ELEPHANTS AND GOLDEN THRONES

This complex mixture of history and stories from seven important periods in the life of the Forbidden City attempts to bring that astonishing place directly to young readers. With its dense text and photo captions in small type, it may best be suited for a traveler going to China. Each section starts with a story based on historical sources (sometimes told from unusual viewpoints such as an elephant or a princess’s ghost) and ends with a description of a specific Imperial era. In an almost hidden note, Marx states that the stories are based on books listed in the bibliography, but there are no specific source notes. The lack of a table of contents and an index makes it difficult to use the book for research. Senisi’s modern photos and images and art reproductions from the Palace Museum’s collection are striking, but the paintings are not dated. Very attractive but flawed. (foreword, timeline, glossary, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10 & up)