Beastly Peas (Night of the Veggie Monster - George McClements)

Member Name: MagdaDH

Product:	Night of the Veggie Monster - George McClements
Date:	19/09/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun idea, good artwork

Disadvantages: fisrst person picture books are harder to understand for young children

This is an astonishing tale of a boy turned into a monster by anything edible and green. His toes curl, his chair ends up on the floor, roars and general mayhem follows. Who knows, maybe it's some allergy, y'know? Or perhaps a food sensitivity? Or maybe he doesn't eat according to his blood group?

His parents are familiar with a spectacle, though, and remain totally calm, in fact coolly commenting on the transformation. One night, though, the boy accidentally eats a pea - a whole pea - and doesn't notice. What's going to happen?

I am in two minds about this book. One one hand, it's really well drawn and told, with modern, quite grown up artwork to rival the best and sparse, to the point text. The cool parents are a great touch and the whole thing reads and looks like a wry cartoon.

On the other hand, I both dislike and can't relate to this veg-eating (or veg-non-eating) panic. Yes, it might be because I must be one of the few mothers who frequently utter sentences of No, you can't have another apple, have a packet of crisps instead, or maybe because I had not seen a child that doesn't like fruit or refuses to eat all vegetables until I started living in the UK. The thing that Polish children reputedly don't eat, or so their parents used to worry, was invariably meat. But regardless of reasons, I strongly believe that most children will eat some form of vegetables, and if not, they will certainly eat fruit and even if they don't, getting bothered in the slightest about it just isn't worth it at all as it's our anxieties they pick up. The more you worry about something they don't eat, the more likely they are to refuse (and a book like that might just put an idea in their head!)

If you have a fussy eating child and it causes you, for whatever reasons, any anxieties, this picture book will be ideal. Otherwise, it's a mild diversion worth borrowing, but not especially seeking out. Thus, the rating averages out at about 3.5 stars overall, and I will be mean here and take it down to three.

Summary: good but not special