Peter the Great, crowned tsar of Russia at the age of ten, believed that whatever he wanted he should have—and the sooner the better.  As a boy he had trained monkeys and dancing bears to amuse him, a staff of dwarves to serve him, and, when he felt like playing soldier, his own army of playmates with real uniforms, horses, cannon, and flags.

All his life Peter would want fantastic things, and he wanted most to bring his beloved country into the modern world.  He traveled to the West to learn European ways—the first tsar ever to leave Russia.  He went disguised as a common soldier and worked as a laborer, learning the craft of shipbuilding, exploring the West with excitement and curiosity.  He returned home with ten shiploads of bounty, from microscopes and a stuffed crocodile to experts in all fields.  He began a series of breathtaking social reforms and, to satisfy his boyhood dream of a Russian naval port, began to build, in a freezing swamp, a glittering new capital to be named St. Petersburg.  

Diane Stanley's meticulously researched text and sumptuous illustrations capture for young readers the fabulous world of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century tsarist Russia and the greatness of her leader—a man of huge stature and tremendous spirit whose impatience and vision, insatiable curiosity and boundless energy transformed half a continent.

From the dust jacket