Imagine if you knew the Queen farted but no one else wanted to believe you — and you could even end up in jail if you let out the secret.
That’s the premise behind Queenstowner Sally Stone’s newly-published children’s picture book, The Queen of Farts.
Aimed at toddlers through to 12-year-olds, it’s been published by Australia’s Lake Press, which commissioned Australian Mick Byrne to illustrate Stone’s rhyming narrative.
The author, who’s thrilled the book’s been published — and is tickled pink with its hard cover and ‘royal’ purple colouring — says she can’t recall how she came up with her subject matter.
‘‘I suppose kids love bums and farts and smells, and then I thought, who would be someone that shouldn’t fart?
‘‘[That’s] the Queen, and what happens if she did, ‘oh my god’.’’
Without revealing the plot, here’s a sample from the book:
‘‘The Queen’s farts are so smelly and loud,
it’s no joke — she can scatter a crowd!
They fan their faces and say, ‘My poor nose!’
She leaves trails of destruction wherever she goes.
It’s the best-kept secret in royal society, but no one confronts her, it gives them anxiety.’’
The book’s being distributed through Whitcoulls in New Zealand and Big W, Dymocks and QBD in Australia — handily, just in time for the Christmas market.
Timing also worked for Stone’s other published book, Pandemic.
Written for 10-to-12-year-olds, it came out in 2012 and was set in 1918 against the backdrop of the Spanish flu which broke out towards the end of World War 1.
When the world entered its next pandemic, called Covid, in 2020, her publishers then found an excuse to reprint the book, complete with an
updated preface.
Stone says she’s now thinking of some ‘royal’ sequels to The Queen of Farts, like The Prince of Sneezes.
She’s also written an adult women’s novel she’d love to get published.
