The Queens’s Handbag
Steve Antony,
Hodder Children’s Books
There sits Her Majesty in the royal coach set to depart on her Great Britain tour when ‘swoosh!’ along comes a swan and away it swoops clutching her handbag firmly in its beak. Abandoning the coach, the Queen speeds off in her Aston Martin convertible hot on the trail of the sneaky thief all the way to Windsor Castle …

and thence to Stonehenge.
From there it’s next stop Dover, followed by Oxford, Snowdonia, the Giants Causeway, Edinburgh Castle and all the way back to where she started. In the course of her break-neck chase Her Royal Majesty changes vehicle many times from motor bike, to Red Arrow plane, to penny farthing,

then a parachute, a speedboat, a steam train

– what an amazing acrobat she is – and a final gallop right back to London where she finds herself and the thieving bird caught up in the London Marathon. WOW! See her go …

but can she catch that sneaky swan and retrieve the object of her chase? That would be telling wouldn’t it…
Delivered with considerable aplomb, and rendered in an appropriately regal colour palette, with a Union flag strategically placed in almost every location spread, not to mention a royal corgi, this is more than a worthy successor to The Queen’s Hat.
One cannot help but wonder just how many police officers got themselves involved in the chase (their antics are hilarious), and Her Majesty’s butler too makes a special appearance.
A laugh-on-every-page follow up to The Queen’s Hat and a veritable visual feast of British landmarks and the constabulary.

There’s an exciting event coming up in London on 23rd to 29th October: the Children’s Book Illustration Autumn Exhibition

Use your local bookshop