Name: Svetlana G.

Book Title: The Ickabog

Author: J.K. Rowling

Genre: Fantasy

Number of Pages: 274

Rating: 5/5

Find the book in our catalog!

Watch out, there's a new fairytale in town. 

Character List:

• Daisy Dovetail - Daisy is the seamstress’s daughter. Her mother died from being overworked by King Fred, and Daisy is the first to think that Cornucopia isn’t all the King says it is, as well as being the first one not to worship the king just because he lives.
• Bert Beamish - Bert might not be the best friend you wished you had, but he has a smart brain, once he has a good reason to use it. After all, without Bert’s brain, people would have believed the giant lie that was being told to them. But more on that, later.
• Mr. Dovetail - Mr. Dovetail is Daisy’s father. He is a carpenter, and would do anything for his daughter. Although he turns insane towards the middle of the book, Mr. Dovetail is super talented. Talented enough to create a masterpiece designed to fool thousands. But you didn’t think he wanted to do it?
• Mrs. Beamish - Bert’s mother is the best baker in all of Cornucopia. The King loves her pastries, and the little baked treats and-- Case in point, Mrs. Beamish’s baking might save her life one day. One day very soon.
• King Fred - King Fred is a bit foolish, a bit more stuck up, and most of all, a lot gullible. When people tell you to choose your friends wisely, they mean you, Fred.
• Lord Spittleworth - Lord Spittleworth is cunning, bratty, rich, evil and greedy. (Insert any other villainous traits here). You name it, he’s done it. Trick the king and all his royal subjects? Check. Bribe half the royal guard and terrify the other? Check. Tax the country so much that everyone falls into poverty? Check, check and check. What starts off as a little lie, and like a snowball rolling downhill, gets bigger and bigger and bigger, until it’s all Lord Spittleworth can do to keep it afloat.
• The Ickabog - He’s a fairy tale. Really. Until Lord Spittleworth decides that maybe he should be real. Will the real Ickabog please step forward?

Review:

Crafted in the format of a fairy tale, this is a story that J.K. Rowling began before she stumbled across Harry Potter. Everything about this screams “fairy tale.” We have the villains, the king, the monster, and the heroes. We have a moral. (A couple actually). We even begin with “Once upon a time.” Yet hidden between the lines are themes and morals too dark for a children’s book. You might skip over them once or twice while reading the short novel, but once you really start taking the story apart...There’s more hidden every time you read it.

Starting off with a “Once Upon a Time,” we have a perfect kingdom. Cornucopia. Everything is perfect. The 5 major towns of the land produce the best food in the world. The King of a nearby kingdom has offered his daughter’s hand in marriage for a lifetime supply of Mrs. Beamish’s baked treats. However, Cornucopia has one embarrassment; the marshlands. Nothing grows there except plain mushrooms. The sheep the pastors graze are starving from malnutrition. The people aren’t much better. No one thinks about the Marshlands. In fact, the only thing people know about those boggy parts is a fairytale. The monster by the name of “Ickabog”. It is said that he's scary, eats children and small animals, and only comes out at night. Everyone knows the Ickabog isn’t real. He’s like the monster-under-the-bed; used to scare small children into obedience. Yet how was the nation supposed to know that the disaster was to start with a seamstress?

King Fred was loved by everyone. King Fred the Fearless. (He made the name up himself). Who everyone despised were his two best friends: Lord Spittleworth, and Lord Flapoon. Unfortunately, King Fred believed anything that came out of his friends’ mouths. One day, on a special occasion, King Fred ordered a suit to be finished by his best seamstress. No one else was to touch it. Well, it so happened that the best seamstress was Mrs. Dovetail, and she was sick that week. Nevertheless, not wanting to lose her job, Mrs. Dovetail went and finished the suit. She was found the next morning dead, with the last button in her hand, the finished suit in her lap; she had died sewing. This was the first sign of trouble. King Fred was under the (correct) impression that his servants weren’t nearly as sincere to him as they were before. People bowed nowhere nearly as low as they did before. What could be the cause? Could it be the black-covered house in the middle of town? The Dovetail house was mourning. The city sympathised. King Fred made his second mistake. He moved the Dovetails to the edge of town, towards the cemetery. And so Daisy Dovetail grew up looking out the window at her mother’s grave. She lost her best friend, Bert Beamish, when they had an argument in the courtyard. It was about the King. Daisy insulted him, calling him out on being selfish and vain. Bert’s father was a loyal royal guard, and Bert was also loyal to King Fred. Lord Spittleworth overheard the argument, relating it to the King. Bert was rewarded, Daisy punished. Yet Daisy’s words stuck to the King. He was determined to show everyone (mostly himself) that he wasn’t. So when a Marshlander comes in, complaining to the King about the Ickabog eating his dog, instead of being laughed off the podium, the King decides to ride to the Marshlands to defeat the monster. Lord Spittleworth covered the expedition as a tour of the country, yet word still got out.

Due to a couple of stupid mistakes, instead of discovering the real creature, Lord Spittleworth started the snowball lie downhill. The story moves on from there, as Spittleworth trips from one mistake to another, using people and their loved ones to cover lies, collect too much taxes, and shield King Fred from the ugly truth.

I like this book, it’s simple, funny, and is definitely a good read, even if I did just pick the book up to see if J.K. Rowling’s writing style changed with genre. (It didn’t.)