Assuring readers that “you’re not the first to have a time out, you’re not the worst,” Lucke presents 14 of the badly behaved from history—including Cleopatra the “Phighting Pharaoh,” Isabella the “Not-So-Clean Queen” (she claimed to have bathed only twice in her life) and the “Armée Brat” Napoleon: “He looked at Germany and said, ‘Mine.’ He saw Italy and said, ‘Mine.’ ” Unfortunately, she wastes her promising premise by skipping over nearly all of the actual details (“In 1717 Bach was given a time out for ‘stubbornness’), and by not checking her facts carefully—no, Rosa Parks did not become an activist after she was arrested, and no, she did not receive the Congressional Medal of Honor (she did win the Congressional Gold Medal). The painted gallery of recognizable figures scowling, pouting, having tantrums and sitting in corners can’t compensate for the anemic text; steer readers instead to titles in the Horrible Histories series. No source citations, either. (Nonfiction. 8-10)
