Animal Stew

The ingredients in Evan the Enormous Giant's animal stew disappear when the animals eat one another, but an excess of pepper changes the situation entirely, in a lighthearted, lift-the-flap storybook.

"One day at about lunch time, Eva the Enormous Giant got enormously hungry." And so, according to Roddie's lighthearted culinary caper, the lady takes up her brightly colored sack and collects ingredients for a gourmet repast: a caterpillar, a frog, a fox, a crocodile and a "big brown bear." In Gallagher's crisply defined, animated illustrations, the animals are gathered in turn into Eva's bag--represented by sizable lift-up flaps--then tossed into her cast iron pot. From smallest to largest, each creature then devours the next; but they all, reacting to an excess of pepper, promptly sneeze out their catch. The animals flee through a flap door; Eva's resultant lunch would hardly thrill Julia Child. Both text and art here are appropriately forthright and evince a kid-appealing charm. The uncomplicated paper engineering, perfectly geared to the intended audience, affords repeated opportunities for hands-on amusement. Ages 2-5.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A deceptively simple cumulative tale about an enormous giant (Eva) who collects bigger and bigger animals and puts them into a sack, where a flap reveals them becoming increasingly crowded and scared. Then, it's into the pot; but while Eva is grinding the pepper, ``Frog ate the caterpillar, Fox ate the frog,'' and so on until everybody's inside Bear. The pepper makes Bear sneeze; ``out shot Crocodile,'' also sneezing, and soon all five animals are out the door, leaving hungry Eva to dine on pepper soup. Both the lighthearted text and the broadly comic cartoons are truly funny--this is a flap book that offers an appealing story and makes unusually creative use of its popular format. The bold, cartoon-style illustrations are perfect for group sharing. (Picture book. 2-6) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.