The King’s Book is a fictionalized story about the translation and publication of the 1611 King James English Bible. The main character is a boy, Nat Culver, whose father is one of the fifty-four men who is helping to translate and revise the English Bible at the behest of King James I. The plot involves secret Catholic priests and recusants (English Catholics who refuse to convert to the Anglican church), quarreling Bible scholars, and Nat’s own quest to decide who and what to believe in a London full of gossip and wild tales.

Vernon’s book contains a lot of interesting anecdotes about the men who produced the King James Bible: Lancelot Andrewes, John Bois, Sir Henry Savile, Dutch Thomson, Andrew Downes, and others. Sir Francis Bacon makes a sort of cameo appearance as a secret polisher and finisher of the text. And the stories Vernon inserts into her book are interesting, taken individually. However, the little vignettes about the circumstances and the men are just that: inserted into the overall story in an odd and jerky way that makes the book feel as if it is nonfiction masquerading as a fiction story. Nat finds out that one of the translators is an alcoholic, that Francis Bacon, not the king, is the man who actually chose the committee of translators, that the translators haven’t been paid for their work and some are living in poverty, and so on. All these things come to light while Nat is desperately trying to prove that his father is not a Catholic recusant and while Nat himself is being accused of thievery.

I think I read one of Ms. Vernon’s other books and found it better than this one. The King’s Book might be the only introduction for children readily available for the story of how the King James Bible came to be, but it would have been much improved if it had just been written as a nonfiction narrative. I could have done with a great deal more biographical information about the translators and historical information about the setting and the events of the times and a lot less about Nat running around spying and carrying messages all over London.