Product Description

"Are you the lady who is to teach the royal family?"
She inclined her head slightly. "I am."
"Have you friends in Bangkok?"
"I know no one in Bangkok at all."

Customer Reviews (3)

Good but not great
I enjoyed the book. It wasn't the best book I've read, but not the worst either. I didn't like the way the characters just had names. Nothing about anyone was in depth. It was like oh there she is and that was all. I would ony recomend it to a younger audience.

An "almost true story"
Kids shouild have fun reading this and later on they can read the older version. Anna in later life di make up a false background buyt only because she could not succeed with the one sha had. She was poor but well educatedas her writing shows. She was fluent in 13 languages, and is recorded bypeople to have been thanked by Chulalkongkorn for teaching him about theevils of slavery which he ended. Even her greatest detractor gives hercredit. She was known in BAngkok as the White Angel as her grandchild didwrite.Her life after Siam is just as spectacular.The book may not tellthe full truth (Anna needed to sell her books so exaggerated but sherecords she and the king as actually being good friends) but tellls anamazing tale.

Fun, but False
Enjoy this book, and the plays, movies, etc.But please, please, please, don't think for a minute that it is "almost true."Anna Leonowens was a liar who dropped out of school at the age of 14 to be themistress of a British clergyman.She got the job in Siam by falsifying hercredentials.The real story of His Majesty Rama IV, and his son, Rama V,is much more interesting than any of these thin romances. ... Read more