What is the point of Meghan Markle’s new children’s book?

Meghan Markle has written a book for children. Of course she has. There is no celeb, no matter how busy, who doesn’t have a children’s book in them, because children’s books, you might think if you didn’t know better, don’t need plot or character or much in the way of style. It was either that, or a cookbook.

The Bench, for that is the name, is based apparently on a poem Meghan wrote for her husband for father’s day, a month after little Archie was born. Because that’s what you do with a small baby, isn’t it… you write a poem. It’s short, it would seem, but then William Nicholson’s wonderful, illustrated book, Clever Bill, which Maurice Sendak thought a masterpiece, had fewer than a hundred words. Brevity isn’t a problem in a book for children.

There are only a few excerpts of Meghan’s book available, illustrated with watercolours by one Christian Robinson.