We haven’t read a children’s illustrated book like The King’s Golden Beard in a long time. It’s a timeless illustrated book that feels as old as the hills, yet as current as whatever is trending on social media now. It’s a book that’s short on words, but long on story, instead of letting the illustrations and the white spaces within the pages fill in the blanks for young audiences. The King’s Golden Beard is also very smart and treats those young readers, or anyone else who jumps into the book, like the intelligent readers they are, even if they suspect they know where the story is going.
A glimpse of the respect that the book has for its audience can easily be found. “Who’s to blame when a vain, heedless king meets his comeuppance”, the book asks on the back cover. Vain, heedless, and comeuppance are words that I’ve rarely if ever, seen in a children’s illustrated book. Moreover, those words aren’t even in the book’s text, but they perfectly describe the overarching plot.
The King’s Golden Beard is written and illustrated by Klaas Verplancke. The combination of text and pictures are as perfectly matched in a story as we’ve seen in recent memory. There are only two other books that jumped out at us as quickly the past couple of years and they are A Creepy Pair of Underwear and This Thing Called Life. Both of those books left an immediate and indelible mark as an illustrated book, and The King’s Golden Beard joins them as a new release that could immediately be called a new classic.
As an adult, the art in the book is jarring and memorable and for the best of all possible reasons. At times the images are impossibly close-up with a distorted perspective. For example, on some pages, all we see is the king’s lip, beard, and feet, but the distances between the first two are too close, giving readers the mental image of a gnome-like body. It uses stark outlines or contrasting colors and sets them against font that parries the varying size and layout of the words. The words are then aligned at various angles on the pages to help tell its very imaginative, yet all too real story.
The story is set in a time when everyone thinks that the world is flat; also the king has decreed that only he shall have facial hair. He has a beautiful beard that grows fast and because he’s the only one who is allowed to have facial hair, his beard quickly outgrows the castle and spreads around the world.
The king’s astronomers have told him that the world was round, but the king knows better and isn’t listening to them. One day the king’s scouts notice a golden beard that’s growing toward the back end of the castle. As the king has allowed him the only one to grow facial hair he immediately dispatches his soldiers to chop down that beard piece by piece, wherever it was coming from.
The story can be told very quickly and is a timeless warning that the back cover alludes to. It’s the addition of the art that propels The King’s Golden Beard to a higher level that will warrant its entry into your forever library. The art is playful, weird, funny, absurd, and will make elementary-aged children laugh out loud. Those older readers might find aspects of Verplancke’s art reminiscent of Monty Python, or the humor from The Pee-Wee Herman Show. Those same readers will also realize that this is a book as comfortable in 2021 as it would be in 1987. The King’s Golden Beard is one of those children’s picture books that kids will laugh at and adults won’t mind reading over and over. It’s a classic that will immediately feel at home beside the other books that have shortlisted themselves to the books that your children will read to their children.
The King’s Golden Beard is by Klaas Verplancke and available on Minedition.
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