I AM THE KING!

When his mother gives Little Louis a toy gold crown, the pint-size rabbit promptly turns into a diminutive despot with a fondness for referring to himself in the third person. "The King will not go to school," he pronounces, as his mother drags him by the heels. "The King prefers pink," he declares, as he slathers paint on an unfortunate schoolmate. As a monarch, Louis isn't very successful—most of his demands are met with a sternly admonishing finger and some unwanted consequences—but his unshakable conviction that he rules makes him a wonderfully comic figure. Ghana-born Dieterlé uses heavy black outlines and thick applications of vibrant gouache to mirror the comic Sturm und Drang of Louis's world. On one page, Louis is the very picture of imperiousness, with his nose tipped in the air; on the next, he is a cauldron of frustration, his brows knitted into a "V" of hostility. The fellow's subjects (mom and dad) finally rebel and send him to his room, whereupon Louis decides that if he can't be a king, he'll assume the identity of a big bad wolf (a costumed and darkly imposing Louis then menaces his cowering stuffed animals). Dieterlé credibly suggests that a child's loose emotional ends can't always be neatly tied up. Ages 2-5. (Apr.)