King Hugo's Huge Ego

August 1, 2011

Gr 1-3-King Hugo is a mini monarch (he's three foot three) who thinks very highly of himself. He makes his subjects bow to him as he extols his magnificence throughout the kingdom. One day his royal coach careens by a woman working along the road and sends her into a ditch. She just happens to be a sorceress and casts a spell on him. Each time he begins to brag, his head grows a tad bigger. When he topples from the top of the castle and rolls like a boulder into the valley, he once again meets the sorceress, who reveals her curse. To prove she is the creator of his misfortune, she allows all the haughty things he has said to explode from his head. Returning to his original appearance, he realizes what a fool he had been and humbly apologizes. "What happened next was kismet/yet truly unforeseen: /he became a better man, /and she became a queen!" This enchanting story in verse will appeal to readers who can laugh at the foolhardy king while enjoying his bizarre transformation. Children will revel at the fanciful illustrations and celebrate when the braggart receives his comeuppance. The gouache illustrations demand attention and are rich in comedic detail with a fairy-tale quality. This is a great group read-aloud that offers opportunity for reflection and discussion.-Diane Antezzo, Ridgefield Library, CT

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2012
An entire village puts up with its megalomaniacal king. When he gets on the wrong side of a maiden (who's really a sorceress), she decides to teach him a lesson to suit his crime. Well-built rhymes sustain the plot to the fabulous finish. The gouache art is loud and busy, but then again, demure and refined this story isn't.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2011

A cautionary tale loses track in this fable of an egomaniacal monarch.

Here's how this story ends: The king and the sorceress fall in love and live happily ever after. And this is a surprise, because just a few pages earlier, the sorceress had put a curse on the king. His head inflated until it was 10 feet wide, so that he would learn to be less arrogant. Some picture books would conclude the story there, with King Hugo humble and chastened and vowing never again to say things like "Say, who's the most majestic king?" But a few pages from the end, the sorceress has a realization: "Could it be, deep down inside, / she kind of liked the king?" The author, it seems, is a die-hard romantic. Readers may be less forgiving, not only because the romance comes out of left field, but because the author tries to rhyme "and bent down on his knee" with "then spoke most humbly." The awkward verses make it difficult to put up with an insufferable main character—and vice versa. The pictures of King Hugo floating through the air, however, are hysterical; readers may wish the book had ended on that punch line. Even in the age of The Stinky Cheese Man, sometimes a tidy moral is best.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from May 23, 2011
"Long ago, when people spoke/ with words like âthou' and âthee,' " a Napoleonic figure (in attitude and physical stature) named King Hugo ruled supreme. While his subjects think he's a joke, they have no choice but abjection: they bow low when he passes by and pretend to listen his "Speech of Adoration," a weekly hours-long "boring buzz/ of how mighty and magnificent/ King Hugo thought he was." Comeuppance takes the form of a comely, feisty peasant maid named Tessa, who, unbeknownst to the king, is also a sorceress. "Let's see if all your arrogance/ can fit inside your head," she says, and sure enough, "his head kept bloating,/ bulging bigger every day" with each narcissistic act, until he looks like a bobble head doll on steroids. A life lesson and true love tie up the loose ends, but not before readers are treated to a terrific mélange of satire, slapstick, and caricature, all served up with expert comic timing. Van Dusen (The Circus Ship) may be puncturing the myth of infallible monarchy, but readers will have no trouble pledging obeisance to his comic majesty. Ages 3â6.