The King of Quizzical Island

K-Gr 3Having a "most inquisitive mind," the King of Quizzical Island tells his loyal subjects he is going to sail to the edge of the world to see what he can find. Despite their concern for his safety, he is determined to go and builds a ship with wood from a Tea-Bag Tree, rigging made from a spider web, and uses a bumblebee for a rudder. In rhyming text, Snell tells of the king's strange and marvelous adventures in a Jigsaw Land, where everything lay in pieces, in Vertical Land, where everything stands on end, and his watery trials with Hurricane Harriet and the Sea of Dreadful Dreams. One day, he finds himself at his own back door, proving, he tells his cheering followers, that the Earth is, indeed, round. When a doubting Owl suggests that the King might just have been sailing in circles, the monarch, ever upbeat, orders up a 10-foot-wide, diamond-studded spadein order to dig a tunnel to the other side of the world. That, however, the author tells readers in a surprise ending, "is another story." McKee's lively black-and-white line drawings (only the King is depicted in color) match the mood of this fanciful tale. It's best read aloud where children can participate in elaborating on the King's adventuresor devising new ones for this most curious ruler."Barbara Elleman, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA"

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