His Royal Highness, King Baby: A Terrible True Story
by Sally Lloyd-Jones; illus. by David Roberts
Primary    Candlewick    48 pp.
9/17    978-0-7636-9793-8    $16.99

“Once upon a time, there was a Happy Family” consisting of a mother, father, daughter (shown with tights on her head simulating long, blonde, princess-y hair), and pet gerbil. Life was grand until “one horrible, NOT NICE day, when a new ruler was born.” The newly minted big sister describes, in a classic-fairy-tale narrative style, the havoc wreaked by her demanding baby brother. Even better, she draws the story as she sees it, in entertaining childlike illustrations that mirror — and some-times humorously deviate from — Roberts’s watercolor and pen art showing the book’s true events. (Though Roberts, too, gets cheeky with his imagery — see the picture of King Baby as Louis XIV.) The stylish illustrations situate the story in the 1960s/1970s, with bell-bottoms and groovy patterns and prams and wicker chairs; this combined with the author’s and illustrator’s dedications (respectively: “To Siân, my baby sister” and “For my mum and her baby brother”) points to the possibility that the tale is at least semi-autobiographical. And while it’s true that a new baby can be a royal pain in the bum, the princess eventually learns that having a doting little playmate has its benefits. Pair with Kate Beaton’s King Baby (no relation).

From the November/December 2017 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.