Gettin' Down and Dirty! Bloom by Doreen Cronin

ONCE UPON A TIME
IN A BEAUTIFUL GLASS KINGDOM
THERE LIVED AN UNUSUAL FAIRY NAMED BLOOM.

HER BOOTS WERE CAKED WITH MUD. BEETLES RESTED IN HER HAIR.

BLOOM'S MAGIC COULD SPIN WIND INTO GLASS, TURN WEEDS INTO BLOSSOMS, AND GROW TRICKLES OF RAINWATER INTO RACING RIVERS.

That was all well and good with the King and Queen and their snooty court, but Bloom's untidy appearance and sloppy working environment--messy buckets of mud leaving untidy trails about the landscape--did not sit well within the royals's lovely crystal city. Mud here and there definitely spoiled the upscale ambiance.

AS THE YEARS PASSED AND THE KINGDOM BECAME LARGER AND SHINIER, THE PEOPLE CARED LESS AND LESS ABOUT BLOOM'S MAGIC AND NOTICED ONLY THE MESS.

Apparently the rulers of the crystal kingdom were unfamiliar with the old proverb that said, "To make an omelet, you must first break some eggs!"

There is a palace revolt and poor Bloom, mess and all, is banished from the crystal city and flees into the forest, where she finds a happy place to continue her magic.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones! And kings and queens who live in glass castles shouldn't cast aspersions on fairies, either. Fairies can have dirty tricks up their gossamer sleeves. Slowly the city loses its pristine sparkle. The glass castle acquires ghastly cracks. The river dries up, and with it the beautiful flowers and trees that had graced the grounds.

THE CASTLE WAS HELD TOGETHER BY DUCT TAPE, GLUE, AND PEASANTS.

At first the King goes a progress into the forest to find Bloom, but is put off by her proffered bucket of mud. So he sends Genevieve, a self-effacing chambermaid whose only task is polishing the Queen's crystal sugar spoon, whom he hopes will have more luck. Bloom is bemused and queries why such a small and delicate emissary has been sent to her for help.

"BECAUSE I AM ORDINARY!" ANSWERED GENEVIEVE.

Her answer pleases the down-to-earth fairy, and Bloom sets to work, teaching Genevieve the lost art of molding her beloved mud into sturdy bricks, and together they build a strong and beautiful house in the forest. The royals are impressed with what a messy fairy and an un-ordinary girl can do, and they are invited back to the kingdom to teach the subjects to get down and dirty, building a solid city of bricks and learning the value of toil in the soil.

In a departure from her popular stories of comical animals, Doreen Cronin's latest, Bloom (Atheneum Books, 2016) is a parable of appearance vs. reality, with a lesson in civic responsibility starring two extra-ordinary girls. Caldecott winner David Small contributes comic light and airy-as-a-fairy watercolor illustrations, with a freckle-faced, red-haired heroine of a fairy who teaches a lesson in sensible cooperation with a bright grin, assisted by a design that uses assorted fonts, even Gothic capitals, to add a spritely lift to this modern fairy story. Publisher's Weekly gives Cronin's newest a starred review, calling it a "...smart, subversive fairy tale."

Cronin's works include the best-selling series begun with Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, and David Small's Caldecott honors include So You Want to Be President?, The Gardener (Caldecott Honor Award), and One Cool Friend. (See review here).

Born to Be Wild: The Wild Queen--The Days and Nights of Mary Queen of Scots by Caroline Meyer

"I was the cause of my father's death.

My father had badly wanted a son who could be the next king. When he married my mother, a French duchess, he already had three illegitimate sons, but by law a bastard could not inherit the Scottish throne. My mother bore him two more sons; both infants died. I was my father’s last hope, and when the news reached him of the birth of a lass—a girl—that bitter disappointment was more than he could endure. Had I been a boy, he would still be alive.

From my earliest days I have too often found myself at the center of disastrous events. That was the first. My birth killed my father, and I became queen of Scotland."

This dramatic story, likely apocryphally attributed to the anti-feminist John Knox, embodies the perils of constructing historical accounts of early queens, about whom what is known must be regarded as questionable, written as it in the interests of enemies and succesors. Nevertheless, it is believable that this Queen Mary felt herself born under a dark star, but a woman with a mission to preserve her embattled realm.

Crowned Queen of Scotland as a nine-month's old babe, the only legal heir to the throne, Mary's French mother quickly had her betrothed to young Prince Edward, heir to the throne of Henry VIII in hopes of preventing an English invasion and takeover of Scotland. But when little Edward died, Mary's mother, a member of the powerful Guise family in France, then sought a new alliance, betrothing her to Francoise, Dauphin of France, two years her junior. While her mother remained in Scotland to rule as regent for the child queen, at the age of five, Mary was dispatched to the court of Henry II to be educated and prepared to be the queen of France. Mary became Marie, quickly learned French, became a favorite of the King of France, and enjoyed the support of her Guise grandparents and uncles, and she and the delicate Dauphin became close, more like big sister and little brother than future consorts.

Mary and the still immature Francois were married in 1558. Marie gloried in the role of queen of two countries, but when her frail child-husband died suddenly, young Mary found herself in the powerless role of the virgin dowager Queen of France. To escape the swirling and dangerous politics of the French court and rumors of a forced marriage to the various eligible royalty of Europe, Mary boldly took matters in her own hands and determined to return to Scotland to rule as Queen of Scots.

But Queen Mary found herself equally imperiled by the religious and power politics of Britain. As a devout Roman Catholic, she had a powerful enemy in both John Knox, the extreme Calvinist leader in her own country, and in her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England, herself equally threatened by Catholic factions within the nobility of England. Realizing that she needed a powerful consort to help her control her own warring nobility, Mary finally married her twenty-year-old cousin, the bold and handsome Henry Stuart, who had the virtue, at over six feet, of being slightly taller than the regal Mary, and the vice of being already a notorious womanizer. The passionate marriage, which resulted in the birth of one son, James, soon turned into a battle royal, a miniature version of the state of the country itself.

When Henry Stuart's residence was blown up and he was found dead in the garden, the rumors flew that Mary had had him murdered. The country was split along lines of blood loyalty and religion, and unable to regain control, Mary first sought support in a hasty marriage with James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, but was eventually forced to flee to England, petitioning the protection of her cousin Elizabeth. Feeling threatened by the loyalties to Mary of English Catholics and Mary's own claim to the throne of England as the legitimate great-granddaughter of England's Henry VIII, Elizabeth had her imprisoned and finally after eighteen years confined in the Tower of London, and, finally tried for the murder of her husband Henry Stuart, Mary was dramatically beheaded in 1587.

Carolyn Meyer's forthcoming The Wild Queen: The Days and Nights of Mary, Queen of Scots (Young Royals) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), is the latest in her notable and best-selling The Young Royals series, skillfully building a taut, engrossing piece of historical fiction out of the known and legendary events of this doomed queen's life. As in the lives of modern women leaders, young adult readers cannot help but come to a deeper understanding of the gender, marital, social, and religious politics which shaped the rule and fate of this early female ruler and the parallel story of her cousin and sometimes enemy Elizabeth I of England. Both red-haired, intelligent, and strong willed, these women played a pivotal roles in the beginnings of the modern era and all that came after, and Meyer's The Wild Queen, in its gripping style and historical veracity, (insofar as that is possible) sheds much light upon the forces that faced these young royals and shaped the western world.

Ironically, this Mary, as one of the two queens of this era of Britain, has the last word in history: Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, having died without issue, Mary's son, James, as the only legitimate heir, succeeded her as King James I of the now united kingdom, which ensured that Mary, Queen of Scots, became the direct progenitor of British monarchs to this day.

Carolyn Meyer's Young Royals books include the stories of Mary's cousin, Mary, Bloody Mary,of her French mother-in-law, Duchessina: A Novel of Catherine de' Medici (Young Royals), and of that other doomed French queen whose forced political marriage resulted in great historical changes, The Bad Queen: Rules and Instructions for Marie-Antoinette. Like these earlier works, Meyer includes an appendix with sources for further study on Mary, Queen of Scots.

Facing Up to It: Mustache! by Mac Barnett

Duncan was a terrible king, but he was terribly handsome.

He spent every Royal Day admiring his Royal Reflection, and not doing much else.

Which is why his kingdom was such a Royal Mess. King Duncan didn't repair the roads. He built billboards instead.

King Duncan's kingdom is falling apart. There are potholes in the road big enough to swallow a knight in armor whole--including his charger. Swing sets are collapsing in the parks, and the sheep are forced to scale trees and graze on the thatched roofs of the town. But the more his disgruntled subjects grumble, the more billboards and monuments Duncan constructs, all featuring himself in various heroic poses.

And when his restive and progressively more disloyal subjects protest (waving signs which proclaim BETTER LADDERS FOR POTHOLES), King Duncan's remedy is to hang a mega-banner from the castle walls with his vainglorious visage and the motto I'M GREAT! Duncan may be a legend in his own mind, but to his subjects he's just another pretty political face.

REMEMBER: YOUR KING IS A DREAMBOAT!
DUNCAN, TAMING THE MIGHTY WALRUS

The next morning, the King discovers that his giant mug on the banner has something new--a huge handlebar mustachio. The King declares that the errant artist must be jailed at once and orders multiple copies of his banner to be plastered to every possible vertical surface in the kingdom.

Done and done. Smug and smiling images of a mustache-less Duncan leer down from everywhere at his less-than-loyal proletariat.

But the next morning, King Duncan arises to find that his image has apparently been occupied by his people. A different mustache has sprouted on every single poster. Even his own Royal Advisor has been busy all night adding his adornment to King Duncan's upper lip. Duncan orders the mustache malefactors jailed, but still the graffiti grows daily. Finally, Duncan decides to try a tricky tactic. Plastering a benevolent smile on his face (the only likeness of himself in the kingdom without a mustache), the King assembles the populace and demands that the perpetrator reveal his identity.

"My gentle subjects," he said, "you have been playing a joke on me. And I have found the joke hilarious. So if the person who has been drawing mustaches on my picture would just raise his or her hand, we can all laugh and there will be no punishment."

Every hand in the crowd goes up. Aghast, King Duncan orders them all arrested. Alas, the kingdom's punitive prison facilities fall far short of the demand, so the King orders more and more commodious new jails constructed, until Duncan's kingdom is one huge walled prison. But instead of being miserable, Duncan's subjects seem to be enjoying the pristine new prisons. The roads are freshly paved--with no potholes. Their surroundings are freshly painted and problem-free. The formerly restive rebels are really rockin' and rollin' inside their new digs. And King Duncan finds himself all alone with his own reflection in the mirror in his palace outside the prison walls, with no one to admire his handsome and non-hirsute face. It's time to FACE up to reality and give the people what they want.

He got off his Royal Throne.
He stood in front of the Royal Mirror.

He reached for his Royal Paintbrush....

Mac Barnett's Mustache! (Hyperion, 2011) is a timely tonsorial tale which will tickle the fancy of young readers. A sort of variation on The Emperor's New Clothes theme, Barnett is aided in poking fun at the vanities of short-sighted leaders by Kevin Cornell's sly visual humor and lively illustrations. A fantastical soup-strainer story which will dust the reader's cookies!