babyhippoface's Reviews > The Unruly Queen

Minerva von Vyle is a thoroughly spoiled, disobedient, obnoxious child. She's given everything she wants and has run off fifty-two nannies in fifty-two weeks. Nobody wants to hang around this kid. Until nanny number 53 arrives and announces that the Order of Nannies has declared Minerva the "single most difficult child to control". This nanny is here to crown Minerva The Unruly Queen.

Minerva is thrilled with the honor until she realizes that she will spend all her time ruling creatures loathsome and loud, with no dolls, satin sheets, or butlers and maids. But what sort of queen lives with beasts in a cave? she bellows. The sort who never behaves, that's what sort. As the nanny offers more information about the castle on Petulant Peak, the young rebel begins to rebel. Her cushy life with a butler and maids suddenly seems much more desirable, even if she has to behave to keep it. They want a queen who never does as she's told? Minerva decides to go get herself ready for bed. They want a queen who's dirty and smelly? Minerva opts to take a bath. They want a queen with knots in her hair? Minerva brushes until every tangle is smooth. She'll be good all the time, from now on, she decides. The residents of Petulant Peak will just have to crown another child the Unruly Queen. But just in case Minerva reverts to her unruly ways, the fifty-third nanny has one more trick in her bag.

Redmond's destructive little protagonist is deliciously illustrated, as well. Sort of a cross between Gus Grimly's artwork on his wicked fairy tales and Edgar Allan Poe stories and Chris Riddell's The Edge Chronicles. Impish, villainous fun.

A classroom teacher could easily find a week's worth of terrifically fun vocabulary words in this book. The rhyme and meter are both spot on, with nothing forced. "Naughty kids" love Minerva's evil ways, "good kids" like it when she decides to be good, and readers can practice their wicked voice with the nanny. (Me, I tried to sound like Ursula, the Sea Witch, from Disney's Little Mermaid. She's as nasty and oozy as they come.)