Ever since I saw the cartoon movie, "Anastasia", I have been obsessed with learning about the Romanov family, and this book was fantastic for that!
As I've come to expect from all the Royal Diaries books, "Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess" was full of interesting details and characters from the tragic story of the family of Russia's last tsar.
Some of my favorite elements were the family's holiday traditions, Anastasia's tribulations with her sisters (and their OTMA plays), as well as the creepy presence of the sinister Father Grigory, or as he is better known, Rasputin.
As always in this series, there is a section in the back with photos, family trees, and other historical background to add to the diary.
Highly recommended! ( )

What I liked best about this book was that, through a fictional diary kept by Anastasia Romanov, youngest daughter of the last tsar of Russia, was that is showed her not as a royal figure but just as a girl with feelings and concerns. The book begins in 1914. Twelve-year-old Anastasia and her family lead lives of luxury in an elegant palace and enjoy frequant holidays. Anastasia's biggest concern is learning her lessons in time. But as the years go by, and Russia becomes involved in World War I, the Russian people become increasingly dissatisfied, and in 1917, Anastasia's father is forced to abdicate, and the family is exiled to Siberia. The diary ends just two months before seventeen-year-old Anastasia and her family are executed by revolutionaries. The book, except at the very beginning, was really sad, but it brought the life the end of the Romanov dynasty and young Anastasia's final years. I highly reccomend it if you enjoyed any of the other books in this series. ( )

Reviewed April 2001

As far as I can tell this diary is historically accurate - I enjoyed meeting Anastasia's family and what her last years must have been like. You think you have a lot of knowledge about a person or event and then you read something like this that fills in the details and makes the people real. Who cares if her maid was a personal friend named Eva of if she loved to eat salmon, what matters most are the events in her life. We know that the women did have the family jewels sewn into their dresses and in this diary, the girls sit down and sew them into the clothing. I really enjoyed hearing about Rasputin and his influence over the royal family. Also the overview at the end of the book which tells the true historical opinion of the Tsar and his ruling style is very interesting. This book is different from the other young adult books, so far in that it has many actual photos inside. These type of books make good reading on vacation...this time in San Francisco for Caspian's birthday.

8-2001 ( )

Time for my usual sporadic, unorganized nonsense notes:

Anastasia was spoiled rotten, if there is any accuracy in this diary's depiction. On the one hand, I feel sorry for the kid because she surely didn't know the details of the suffering of the impoverished of her country. On the other hand, the oblivious attitude of the Romanovs and their reliance on poor sources of intelligence (Rasputin?)certainly did not enable them to rule the country wisely.

Royalty is always spoiled compared to 'regular' folk. That's inevitable. I think it's just so much more apparent in Anastasia's story because she is so recent (died in 1918) that the descriptions of her luxury resonate more with a modern reader.

The diary itself fails to really show much of Anastasia. Her personality is childish and that is probably not inaccurate. Little insight is shown into Russian culture or how the government was run, which would have been more interesting (but probably not to a child reader, who just wants a 'princess 'story.)

I hadn't realized Anastasia was 17 when she died. I always thought she'd been really young, 10 or 12, for some reason. ( )

Historical fiction, the diary of Grand Duchess Anastasia, describing the way her family lived and the events leading up to the Revolution. A great series for young girls!

One feature of the Royal Diaries series is once the story is finished, the author includes a section which is only facts: pictures/portraits of the main characters, family trees, a "What life was like in (insert name) lived" to help the reader distinguish between what we know about the characters, what we assume from artifacts found, and what the author made up to help the story along. ( )