The best problems in children’s books are the ones a child can hold in their head all at once. Volume three has a good one: the Queen has invited a bus to tea, and the bus does not fit.
RM 168 via Waterloo has already had one bad experience with the inside of a building — the Hampton Court Palace misadventure, which he does not like discussed — and he begins the book having sworn never to drive into one again. The invitation arrives. The promise survives about as long as the envelope.
Enter the Magician
The solution requires the Magician with the 1000 Hats, a man whose spells are best described as generous. Anyone who has ever asked an adult for help with something delicate will recognise the dynamic: the offer is immediate, the confidence is total, and the result is not exactly what was ordered.
A thousand hats, and not one of them has ever helped him get a spell right first time.
Why it works on the page
Because the stakes are small and enormous at the same time. Nobody is saving the world. Somebody is trying very hard not to be late, not to be rude, and not to knock over a palace — which, to a nine-year-old, is a perfectly serious list.
