Prince Not-So Charming 4 – Happily Ever Laughter

Happily Ever Laughter by Roy L Hinuss is the fourth Prince Not-So Charming book, a daft fairy-tale story for 6 year olds about a boy who would far rather be a jester than a prince.

What happens

Carlos is summoned to the throne room on the double, which never means good news. A messenger has arrived from Dire Dominion, and he has brought five musical instruments to play before he will read his message.

The message is an invitation to Prince Hortense's ten-and-three-quarters birthday party. Be late, and it's war. Turn up without your finest clothes, and it's war. Arrive without an expensive and thoughtful present, and it's war.

So no pressure on Carlos, then.

He is so wound up that his juggling routine goes badly wrong, and three plastic sporks take out a stained-glass window, a chandelier and an oil painting of the royal horse. Right in the horse's bottom. (The horse, it should be said, already hates him.)

What your reader gets from here is a small boy trying very hard to be perfect for one afternoon while everything conspires against him. His best friend Smudge is a dragon the size of a young elephant who knits, lights the castle chandeliers and cannot be discouraged about anything. Princess Pinky is in glass shoes she loathes and is quite prepared to poke an armed soldier in the chest about it.

Now, about the jokes. The word of this book is fart-stinky. It turns up nineteen times, in the mouths of the prince, the princess and the queen alike, and a six-year-old will bring it straight to your dinner table. If that's going to bother you, this isn't the one.

The other thing worth flagging is that the threat of war sits over the whole party. Queen Cayenne is not a comedy baddie who turns out to be lovely. She has her servant write down every mistake the children make, there's a piñata shaped like her brother's head, and she mentions quite cheerfully that her husband was killed by a dragon. It's all pitched as farce and nothing horrid actually happens to anyone in these chapters, but a sensitive six-year-old may feel the squeeze.

What to read next

If it does go down well, Once Upon a Prank is where the whole thing starts, with Carlos trying to make his overworked father laugh for the first time in years.