This Scholastic video version of Kathryn Lasky's "Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor" is not so great, but it's short enough, and it's less obnoxious than, say, an episode of Dragonball Z. The plot mainly consists of kiddie Elizabeth writing in her diary, suffering the torments of her half-sister Mary (who is yet again portrayed as having black hair- when actually her hair was as red as Elizabeth's), and trying to keep her good stepmom Queen Catherine from becoming Beheaded Wife #3. It's all pleasantly ludicrous, and the costumes are nicer than you'd expect for a straight-to-video production. But one wonders- were *any* English child actors available to Scholastic Inc.? It seems that they chose the American child actors who were least able fake a convincing English accent; Tamara Hope's accent wanders all over the place, from upper Wisconsin to Cockney a la Dick van Dyke. But it's all harmless enough, I suppose, and worthwhile enough for a twelve-year-old with a Tudor obsession to check out from the library. (But the book is much better.)
