THE KING'S HATS

Oh dear, oh dear! Heavy lies the royal crown on King Charles III’s head.

Worried lest the royal diadem not look as right on him as on his late lamented mum, the kingster follows his wife’s advice and heads for his “Happy Place.” That would be the royal garden, because “he could potter there for hours / with honey bees and birds and trees, / and butterflies and flowers.” There he meets Tom, the White-presenting royal gardener, who reminds him that he has many hats to wear—from a shower cap in the bath to a hard hat while joining workers at a construction site, from a rain hat when meeting farmers to a hairnet when touring a bakery—and so the crown is just one more, to be sported on public occasions: “And you will smile and wave. / Your crown is very heavy, / But remember… / …kings are brave.” Though the sight of the famously stiff new monarch cavorting wildly with children at a party and gamboling about the garden, kilt flapping in the breeze, may push an incredulous chortle past the stiffest upper lip, Beech does get the prominent royal nose and ears just right in his scribbly cartoon pictures. Crowd scenes offer racially diverse groups of onlookers, and a statue of Queen Victoria, scowling at the pigeon on her head, adds a suitably irreverent note to the close. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A doff of the cap to the septuagenarian new monarch, more affectionate than satirical.