Book Description

On a magical day in London, two boys are born into two different families, and they just happen to look exactly like one another. One boy, Tom Canty, is poor. The other boy, Prince Edward of Wales, is obviously rich.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.Tom's first days as a prince are pretty hard, because he doesn't know any of the etiquette or procedures of princehood. It's so bad that he drinks the water meant for washing his hands and stuffs his pockets with nuts at his first royal dinner. Classy.Back to Prince Edward. John Candy has found him-er, wait, we mean John Canty has found him, and John is pretty angry that Edward doesn't have any money to give him. He brings the prince home, assuming that he's Tom, and beats him for saying that he's the prince. Only Tom's mom believes that the prince is not her son. Because moms always know.But the family doesn't have a lot of time to deal with these strange developments: they have to skip town when they find out that John Canty has killed Father Andrew. The prince takes advantage of all the distracted hurry to get out of John Canty's clutches and find out how to get back to the palace.Being a smart kid, Edward does make it back to the palace, but no one believes that he is the real prince. The crowd is just about ready to tear him to pieces when Miles Hendon comes to save the day. Also, everyone gets pretty distracted when it's announced that King Henry VIII has died.So that makes Edward the king. Awesome. You know, except for that whole his father is dead thing. Oh yeah, and no one knows that Edward is the prince, so Tom is the one the royal court turns to. Tom's first act as king is to end Henry VIII's reign of terror by pardoning a bunch of people who have been condemned to grisly deaths.Miles Hendon takes Edward to his home, and the Edward pretty much takes over everything. Hey, he's a prince: he's used to it. After a nap and dinner, Miles tells his whole life story. Apparently he was forced to spend three years away from home because his brother convinced his dad that he was going to elope. Edward is so sad about the story that he gives Miles the right to sit in his presence rather than stand all the time. What a great gift.