Book Review – I’d Really Like to Eat a Child

Last week, I began a new focus for blog posts and introduced a book review.  That was the first of what I plan to be a regular series on BP Connection.  Today’s book review is the next entry in a collection of book reviews about “Wild Things”.

Any adult who has experienced the finicky eating habits of many children will empathize with Achilles’s parents in in I’d Really Like to Eat a Child ($7.99, paperback, Dragonfly Books).  Anyone who has ever set out with determination only to realize they were outmatched will see themselves in Achilles himself.

Achilles is a young alligator who decides one morning that he would really like to eat a child instead of his usual breakfast of bananas.  His parents offer many tempting foods, only for Achilles to reject them and head off to the river to find a child to eat.  He finds a child, who finds him adorable and tickles him before growing bored and throwing him in the river.  Achilles doesn’t give up, though!  He heads home to eat his bananas, grow bigger, and try again.

Sylviane Donnio’s text is light and playful, which will delight young readers.  Dorothee de Monfreid’s water color illustrations are sparse, showing the vastness of an African plain while keeping the focus on the alligator family in the foreground.