THE QUEEN ON OUR CORNER

A child notices a person sitting on the corner whom others ignore or fear.

The protagonist narrates this story of the woman who stays on the corner of their street with her dog. In the narrator’s mind, the queen is tired from battles won and lost; she has slain dragons and journeyed far to arrive here with her royal hound. “But nobody around here knows this.” The other neighbors want the woman to leave, but the narrator treats her like a queen, giving her gifts of tea and toast and listening to her stories. The imaginative kid sees the queen and her royal hound protecting their street at night. And indeed, one night, a fire threatens to destroy a building, and the queen’s calls rouse the people in time to put it out. But once the tragedy is averted, the neighbors start to head back to their homes. The narrator speaks up, telling them what the queen did. The neighbors change their attitudes, and together they all build a home for the queen. This hopeful tale uses a youthful view of the world to imagine what our society could be like if all people and their experiences were valued and respected, though it leaves caregivers on the hook for explaining to justice-seeking children why the story’s resolution is unlikely in real life. The illustrations match the innocence of the text. The narrator is Black, the queen is White, and the neighbors are of various races. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Sweet and thought-provoking.