Happy and glorious (by Hilary McKay)

(Amazon UK link)

I have thoroughly enjoyed everything I have read by Hilary McKay in the past few years. So when I was at the library with my five-year-old grandson, and spotted ‘Happy and glorious’, one of her books intended for younger children, I persuaded him to check it out.

I have spent the past couple of days reading this book aloud to my grandson. I had no idea what to expect. Hilary McKay is a talented author who writes across several different genres of fiction. This one turns out to be gently humorous, featuring a ten-year-old queen. She does not appear to have any relatives, or even a name - she’s just referred to as ‘The Queen’.

The royal household consists of several ladies-in-waiting, a cook, a prime minister and his wife and a treasurer. They’re all rather bossy, and - as we discover through the book - tend to be irritable in different ways. However we first meet them on the Queen’s unofficial tenth birthday. She has been hinting that she would like a birthday present, and only had one thing on her list… but nobody has given her anything. She’s feeling lonely and neglected when she attracts the attention of the gardener’s boy Michael.

Michael is a likeable and generous boy, presumably not much older than the Queen. He is shocked that there was no gift from the general population so he decides to collect donations. All is going well and he has a large amount of money in a bag when he finds himself the victim of a conman…

It’s a book for younger children, so there’s nothing too disturbing, and of course everything turns out well. Each chapter continues the overall story, although they are all complete in themselves. There’s a chapter about some unlikely home improvements made to the palace, involving the entire household camping out while the building work is done. There’s another which my grandson found very amusing where the Queen and the cook agree to switch roles for a day.

The writing is nicely paced, and with just the right amount of surreal adventures and exaggeration which appeal to young children. It would make an excellent book for newly fluent readers or more confident readers up to the age of about nine or ten. But I very much liked reading it aloud and thought it worked particularly well as a read-aloud. 

There is some humour which went right over my grandson’s head (the reason for the Treasurer calling his dog Budget, for instance). I suspect older children would also miss it; but this kind of thing means that the book can appeal to all ages and is therefore excellent for sharing.

Unfortunately ‘Happy and glorious’ is now out of print, or we would have ordered a new copy of this, and its sequel which is called ‘Practically perfect’. Happily, I was able to find both of them inexpensively at the excellent AwesomeBooks site.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews