MONSTERS DON’T EAT BROCCOLI

“Fum, foe, fie, fee, monsters don’t eat broccoli,” but it turns out that they do eat all of the other things depicted on Hendra’s opening endpapers, and more: wheels, ships, boulders, buildings and rockets. Oh—and they also savor trees, remarking that “redwoods are delectable,” and later referring to “a clump of giant maples and their yummy, gummy bark…” The book’s punch line is that the monsters are actually imaginative children pretending that the foods on their plates are all of the things listed in the text and depicted in the illustrations. The penultimate double-page spread reveals that the imagined buildings are Swiss cheese slices, rocket ships are carrot sticks, wheels are sliced tomatoes and trees are, you guessed it, broccoli. The vibrant gouache illustrations capture the silly playfulness of the text as goofy, rounded, toothy monsters delight in their odd meals in a variety of settings. Everything culminates in the closing endpapers’ depiction of the children’s foods, rather than the opening endpapers’ references to their imagined counterparts. A fine serving for storytime. (Picture book. 2-5)