The king, a young boy named Harold, has all gold things. Gold crown and gold robe, gold shoes, gold throne and gold bed, gold toothbrush and gold comb, gold brush and gold pen, gold spoon and gold plates. He even had goldfish in a gold bowl, and his favorite book is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And yet he’s unhappy (I’d go with gold everything has to be heavy, never mind the glare when the lights hit it, but I guess royalty does things differently), and not one of his advisors can figure out why. Amazingly, throwing more gold objects his way just doesn’t seem to work. As they fall to squabbling and the kings hides further and further under his bed, does his page Alfred have the answer?
This was one of my mother’s favorite books growing up and when she lost it spent over forty years trying to find it again. I’m so glad we finally managed to land our hands on a copy, because I can definitely see what made her fall in love. The art is breathtaking.
(Look at these pictures!)
The fact that the moral boils down to being a combination of “material objects can’t solve everything” and “listen to children; sometimes they might just have the answers” is great for a children’s book, especially one published in 1962. I will admit that my particular soft spot is for the page Alfred; out of all the character designs, there is just something about him that makes me smile.
The author has done several other notable things; he was one of the creators of Casper the Friendly Ghost, and he adapted Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH into a picture book version.