Rating: **** 4 stars

Heather Maisner, illustrated by Sheila Moxley,
Diary of a Princess: A Tale from Marco Polo's Travels.
Frances Lincoln, 2002.

This is a story of a journey, told through the diary of the young Princess Kokachin, who has been summoned by the Emperor Kublai Khan to travel to Persia to become the new wife of the Khan of Persia.

Overland travel being considered too dangerous, the party must take the long sea route from China through the Indian Ocean to Persia. The Mongols were no seafarers, so Kublai Khan enlisted the help of the Venetian explorer Marco Polo to accompany the Princess on her voyage. Marco Polo's travel journal gives us the bare facts, but Heather Maisner convincingly recreates the two-year journey, imagining how the Princess would have recorded events in her own diary. Storms, disease and pirate attacks beset the fleet, and there are tales of sea monsters and fierce inhabitants of islands along the way.

Moxley's richly evocative illustrations depict the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the sights the Princess encounters and the jewel-like colours of the Persian court. Based on Marco Polo's 13th century journals, this unusual picture book offers a fresh approach to a fascinating period of history when east and west travelled side by side.

Sue Unstead