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The Fourth King is a lovingly executed fable, an apocryphal but ultimately very orthodox gloss to the Nativity story and the Gospels. The story is told by Mazzel in the first person, using slightly formal, just a little bit old-fashioned language with a few big words, but told simply and with feeling. The story pulls at the heartstrings: each dilemma and each resolution is a bit of a cliff-hanger.
I didn't like the illustrations in The Fourth King much at first: they were too cartoonish for me. But when I saw how interested my daughter was in them, and looked closer, I started to appreciate them more. They provide a slightly humorous backdrop to the story, with Chamberlin the camel often taking stage; while the darkest scenes are rather scary: the slave children building the wall brought images of Mordor and even Auschwitz to my mind, though a young child will obviously not share these associations. Another association I had when reading The Fourth King was with De Saint-Exupery's [[''The Little Prince]] '' (maybe because of the desert and children?).
The book is produced with care and the text and the pictures work well together: some pages are double-width, so they have to be unfolded open to reveal a picture and a text, sometimes funny, sometimes dark.
