The Queen's Goat

by Margaret Mahy

A young queen and her runaway goat make quite a showing at the pet fair, where they win an unexpected prize.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Margaret Mahy was a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up.

Her books The Haunting and The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance both received the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association. There have 100 children's books, 40 novels, and 20 collections of her stories published. Among her children's books, A Lion in the Meadow and The Seven Chinese Brothers and The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate are considered national classics. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Catalan and Afrikaans. In addition, some stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese and Icelandic.

For her contributions to children's literature she was made a member of the Order of New Zealand. The Margaret Mahy Medal Award was established by the New Zealand Children's Book Foundation in 1991 to provide recognition of excellence in children's literature, publishing and literacy in New Zealand. In 2006 she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award (known as the Little Nobel Prize) in recognition of a "lasting contribution to children's literature".

Margaret Mahy died on 23 July 2012.

On 29 April 2013, New Zealand’s top honour for children’s books was renamed the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...

Reviews

[Rebecca I · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short children's book that is quite entertaining. The illustrator was a good one for this theme. What is fun is to see how the pet and the queen get together in spite of the problems that having a pet could present for a monarch.

[Ashlyn Barker-Salyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humorous book about a young queen who wants a pet. The queen ends up adopting a goat as her pet (since dogs and cats were not an option) and together they cause a ruckus in the town. Students will definitely enjoy this light-hearted story...but may want their own pet goat.

[The Brothers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young queen is denied any pets by her servants because they cause too much mess. One more she is invited to a pet show and decides to take the gardener's "working" goat as her pet. Once released from her chain, the goat takes off for the mountains. As they queen and goat gallop through the town, the goat acquires a unique outfit of clothing. The goat tires of running right at where the pet parade is starting and the queen can participate in the pet show after all.

Illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark (of Blue Kangaroo fame) are quite charming.

[Janne Nawawan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny Book, I think many student will laugh when the goat started to run