A MAGA State Visit

A king. A submarine. A caption that says TWO KINGS. A boy with a blank sign and a crayon.

Charlie Peterson is back.

King Charles III is coming to Washington. The White House posts the welcome speech before dinner. Uncle Rick calls it beautiful. Grandpa Earl watches it without saying anything at all. Charlie is on the floor drawing a brachiosaurus, which is the hardest dinosaur because of the neck.

The king does not look the way Charlie expected. He thought there would be a robe, maybe a scepter, some kind of hat. Instead the king wears a dark suit with medals down one side and smiles at things the way adults smile at things they are not surprised by.

During the visit, the President posts a photograph. The caption reads: TWO KINGS.

Charlie's friend Maya has the big dictionary open on her knees. She looked up king. She wants to know what the word actually means. Charlie wants to know too, but he is not sure the dictionary is where the answer is.

The king gives a speech to Congress. He says things slowly, the way people speak when the words are going somewhere. He says the rule of law and independent courts are the foundation of economic growth. Charlie's father says the President doesn't answer to judges. Charlie cannot quite connect those two things, but he can feel the line between them.

At the state dinner, the king gives the President a gift: the original ship's bell from a British submarine launched in 1944. A warship. With his name on it. That has been sailing since before he was born.

Charlie draws. He draws two large figures at the top of the page. He draws himself small, at the bottom. He draws a crowd around all of them, hundreds of figures too small to have faces. Some of them hold signs. Some of the signs say things. Some of them are blank.

He cannot tell if the crowd is welcoming the men or protesting them.

He thinks that might be the point.

A MAGA State Visit is the latest book in the MAGA Seasonal Celebrations series - political satire written in the register of a children's picture book, illustrated in a style that looks, at first glance, like a commemorative edition and feels, on closer inspection, like something else entirely. A companion to A MAGA Jesus, released simultaneously.

Charlie still doesn't know what the blank sign should say.

But he's starting to think that not knowing is its own kind of answer.

For readers who believe the most clarifying question about sovereignty is the one asked by someone who doesn't know yet that he's not supposed to ask it.