Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClements

Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClements
Buy Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClements at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Magda Healey
Summary: A tale of mealtime mayhem for anxious owners of fussy eaters, with great artwork and welcome humour, recommended for that particular niche, otherwise better borrowed.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Maybe
Pages: 32	Date: 3 March 2008
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 978-0747589044
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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 4 Bookbag stars overall.

Thanks to the publisher for sending it to the BookBag.

We can recommend ther books that address fixations & tantrums of toddlers and preschoolers. I Can Do Anything That's Everything All on My Own by Lauren Child looks at the benefits of sharing whilst How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen provides a neat solution to the problem of getting a young child to go to sleep.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClements at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.

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