Queen is a royal pain in the neck! Her Highness treats everyone like her lowly subjects: her classmates, her teacher, even her parents! That’s why all the kids hate Queen and it’s hard for her to make friends. To make matters worse, Queen knows she’s smart, but her new teacher thinks she’s a spoiled know-it-all, and that keeps her in hot water at school.

When a new kid comes to Queen’s school riding a broken bike and wearing run-over shoes, he immediately becomes the butt of everyone’s jokes. Her parents insist she be nice to Leroy, since history has never been kind to queens who forget how to be humble. But Leroy isn’t just smelly, he tells fibs -- whoppers, in fact. And when he says he’s an African prince from Senegal, sparks fly. There’s only room for one blue-blooded family on 33rd Street, and Queen is determined to prove Leroy is an impostor.

What Queen ultimately discovers about Leroy makes her wonder if a broken-bike boy can truly be her knight in shining armor. Can he save her from herself, by teaching her how to be a good friend?

Sharon G. Flake won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award for her first novel The Skin I’m In and is a two-time Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book winner. Beloved by children and adults, critics and booksellers, librarians and teachers, she is the author of six books for young adults that have sold more than half a million copies. The mother of a college-age daughter, Flake writes full time from her home in Pittsburgh.

Colin Bootman is the acclaimed artist and illustrator of Young Frederick Douglass, Follow the Leader, In My Momma’s Kitchen, and Oh, No, Toto. A native of Trinidad, Mr. Bootman is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and lives in New York City.