King Bidgood’s In The Bathtub by Audrey Wood

This is a fun book about a king who likes taking a bath. The story is short and fun to read, but it's the illustrations that make this book noteworthy. They are lush and expressive and whimsical and the attention paid to detail is wonderful. The story is simple and if it was illustrated in another style would be like the endless board books simplistically introducing life skills to toddlers. However, this style makes this story an adventure. The pictures perfectly punctuate the prose in the most flattering way.

The story is about a page who asks the court to get the king out of the bathtub and several people try different things to get him out. A knight tells him there's a battle out side, the queen tells him it's time for lunch, a duke tells him they should go fishing, the entire court tells him to dance at a masquerade, but instead of leaving the tub he makes the person join him in the tub to do whatever they suggest to him! At the end when everyone is at wits end the page pulls the plug and the king finally gets out.

A fun book to read with illustrations that will get their imaginations working. The award on the cover is very much understandable.