Queen of Style

A bored royal turned overzealous cosmetician provides the spark for the husband-and-wife Buehners' (Snowmen at Night ) quirky fable about empathy and gratitude. Fed up with nothing to do, Queen Sophie heeds her exasperated jester's advice to learn something. Soon she's whipping through a beauty school correspondence course and ordering her sheep-farming subjects (and their sheep) into service for her cutting and curling practice. Not everyone appreciates a command beauty treatment, however, a responseSophie learns to contend with, in style. Sporting shiny manicures and a rainbow of gravity-defying coiffures, Mark Buehner's bug-eyed characters bring home the sheer silliness of Sophie's dilemma. The hilarious hairdos on the humans and, especially, on the sheep, make up for the thin spots in the text. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)