Queens have two birthdays, one on the day they were born and one on the day it would have been most convenient for them to have been born on. It is the convenient one that counts.
This Queen is not a happy little Queen. It's her unofficial birthday and no-one had brought her a present. Not the Prime Minister, not the Treasurer, and not even her lazy Ladies-in-Waiting. All she wants is one small, one very cheap, present. Just because it has four legs and a tail and isn't very easy to wrap up. Shouldn't put anyone off...
Hilary McKay excels in conveying the anarchic bedlawm of family life, and she has excelled herself in her marvellous novel, Saffy's Angel which deserves to be placed alongside such classics as Little Women and The Railway Children.
