Picture Book

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NZ Writer & Australian Illustrator (born in Tuscany)

Juliette MacIver, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo

Queen Alice’s Palaces

HarperCollins Australia 2013           $30.00hb           32 pages

ISBN 978 0 7333 3102 2

Published May 1^st 2013

Themes: Buildings/ Stories in rhyme/ Trickery 

Queen Alice has a palace which comes up to expectations of all such buildings - golden and grand – the best in the land and from the eye-catching illustrations she seems very content. Enter Sir Hugh (cunning, conniving and callous and much given to twirling his whiskers) who decides he too should live in such a palace and tries to trick the lovely Queen Alice into building him one – just for him. The fun in the story is the way in which each magnificent building has one vital flaw and falls to the ground before it can be occupied. The verses are cleverly constructed so that each stanza has three rhyming lines then ends on the fourth with a variation on the rhyme for Hugh (new/ bamboo/ Peru/ undo and so on) throughout the whole book. There must be a name for this technique but I can’t think what it is!

Preschool -Year 2/ Ages 4-6

I took these photos of Juliette at the New Zealand launch of the book at Paper Plus, Porirua yesterday afternoon. Many of the guests were children who were enthralled by Juliette’s dramatic rendition of the story as she proved it is great for telling aloud.