Book Description

Fast forward a bit, and Tom is a young boy living in the slums of London. He has an abusive father and grandmother, a kind mother and sisters, and a pretty sad life. But he has a dream: one day, he wants to meet a real-life prince.After dreaming about living in the lap of luxury, Tom makes his way to Westminster Palace one day. When he gets a little too close to the gate, a guard attacks him. Lucky for Tom, this attracts the attention of the prince, who rebukes the guard and lets our little pauper into the palace. It's his dream come true.Surprisingly enough, the two little boys hit it off. Turns out they both have pretty terrible fathers, so we guess that's something to bond over. Eventually Tom gets to tell the prince about his life, and the prince thinks this sounds amazing. You know what's coming next: they decide to swap lives, just for a little while.But right in the middle of all of this, the prince storms out, determined to discipline the guard who bruised Tom. What he wasn't expecting was to be mistaken for Tom and kicked out of the palace because no one could recognize him without his fancy clothes. Now he's just another poor person on the street.The prince tries to tell everyone he comes across what happened to him, but it doesn't work; everyone just thinks he's crazy. Meanwhile, Tom starts to get a little fidgety at the palace. The prince has been gone for a pretty long time, and Tom's worried about getting caught. He tries to turn himself in, but everyone just assumes that he's crazy, too. So the prince's dad, King Henry VIII, orders that no one talk about his son's mental illness. Looks like Tom is going to be the new Prince of England.