The Queen of the North

This book explores the transcendental nature of an understanding of how to identify the things that prompt sadness, longing, melancholy or joy in us, and how essential it is to be able to ask for help, even when one lives within a fairytale.
IBBY Catalogue 2020

(…) with The Queen of the North Joana Estrela demonstrates how she possesses not only the tools with which to put together a thorough-going book (Sister had already shown it, but here that “muscle” is more evident) but also an intelligence capable of re-shaping a traditional form in order to incorporate contemporary concerns.
Pedro Moura, Ler BD blog, 09/04/2017

Joana Estrela rewrites the Legend of the Flowering Almond Trees, in a verbal and visual narrative which invites younger readers to think about what it’s like to be a foreigner in an unfamiliar land. Issues of adaptation, fears and difference, but also discovery and a desire to see the world thus form a bridge between a timeless legend and the era that we happen to live in.
Sara Figueiredo Costa, “Parágrafo” literary supplement (Jornal Ponto Final/Macau), 26/5/ 2017

The book could simply re-tell the Legend of the Flowering Almond Trees and with just that the story would be lovely. But Joana Estrela manages to take this tale of Algarvian origins and give it an enormity which goes well beyond the simple narrative of the Arab king who marries a blonde, blue-eyed princess.
Gabriela Lourenço, Visão magazine, 01/06/2017