An introduction to the life of the Renaissance queen of France who'd do anything to keep her family in power, including use poison and black magic.

Janie Havemeyer has worked as a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, an elementary school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a social studies curriculum designer. For the past six years, she has been working as a literacy tutor. She writes narrative, nonfiction picture books for children, and is busy thinking about the next eccentric character whose story she wants to tell.
Janie is the author of Catherine de’ Medici “The Black Queen,” and Njinga "The Warrior Queen," both in The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Dastardly Dames.


Peter Malone has illustrated over twenty children’s books for such publishers as Chronicle, Knopf, Putnam, Running Press, and Scholastic. In addition to creating gorgeous illustrations, he wrote the book, Close to the Wind, about the use of the Beaufort scale for measuring wind force at sea. School Library Journal called it “informative and utterly charming.” He lives in Bath, England, with his wife, a restorer of paintings, and their two grown daughters.