Queen Munch and Queen Nibble

My daughter's favourite bed time story just now is Carol Ann Duffy's Queen Munch and Queen Nibble. The two queens' personalities are described through their dress: one is colourful, noisy and gregarious (and loves food), the other is 'like a stick of celery', contemplative, and never hungry. While Queen Munch's queendom is as 'splendid as gingerbread', Queen Nibble likes nothing better than to make rain jewellery:

When it rained she would rush outside, pull her long silver needle from one pocket and her golden thread from another and rush up and down, threading and stitching the rain as it fell.

She made wonderful necklaces from the rain, beautiful earrings and pretty rings, faulous tiaras and twinkling cufflinks. This amazing jewellery was kept under guard in Nibble Castle in a glass case which read:

JEWELS FROM THE RAIN OF QUEEN NIBBLE

and nobody was allowed to touch it.

Of course, this sad state of affairs is changed forever, when the two queens meet and the rain comes down. But you must read it for yourself, or your daughter, to find out how this happens, and to wonder at Duffy's sensitive drawing of attitudes to life through the things that we surround ourselves with.