The next picture book by Kate Beaton – Hark! A Vagrant creator and author of The Princess and the Pony – has been announced. Scholastic's Arthur A. Levine Books will release King Baby on September 13, 2016. Get a first look at the cover here:
Cheryl Klein and Emily Clement will co-edit the book. David Saylor is art directing. The book is actually the first picture book project Beaton proposed to Scholastic, before this year’s The Princess and the Pony. “We immediately loved the idea of a baby that rules over everybody’s life, who remains charming throughout in part because he remains so oblivious,” Klein told PW.
While Beaton’s first picture book, The Princess and the Pony had a lot of “girl power” appeal, Clement said that this book is “branching out a little bit,” and hopes that the title will appeal to anyone who knows a baby, making it one that will resonate with “parents, siblings, and those first friends who are starting to have a baby.” The book charts King Baby’s growth “from his first arrival at home, and then there’s sort of a twist at the end,” Klein added. “He grows and he changes, as babies do. We laugh every time we read it.”
