{"id":28709,"date":"2019-02-22T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=28709"},"modified":"2019-02-22T08:00:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T13:00:02","slug":"all-the-better-to-eat-you-with-my-dear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=28709","title":{"rendered":"‘All the Better to Eat You With, My Dear!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

From\u00a0Little Red Riding Hood<\/em>\u00a0to Maurice Sendak’s\u00a0Pierre<\/em>\u00a0to William Steig’s\u00a0Doctor De Soto<\/em>, the risk of being eaten has long been one of the most persistent threats in stories for children\u2014although it\u2019s also a fate marked by astounding reversals. The lion regurgitates its prize or a woodcutter cuts a grandmother from the wolf\u2019s belly, letting readers glimpse the darkness at the heart of the forest, yet escape knowing that all is not hopeless in the end. While being gobbled up isn\u2019t precisely the biggest danger facing most kids these days, it represents something primal about living in a world that can chew you up and spit you out if you forget to pay attention.
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‘Lenny the Lobster Can’t Stay for Dinner’ by Finn Buckley, Michael Buckley, and Catherine Meurisse<\/p><\/div>
\nThis life lesson has, sadly, yet to be learned by unworldly Lenny the Lobster. When his fancy dinner party invitation arrives in the mail, he\u2019s elated. Lured in by the prospect of an elegant party like the trusting fly into the spider\u2019s parlor, his inability to read the room quickly leaves our hapless lobster at the mercy of a ravenous, lobster bib-wearing horde. Luckily, Lenny isn\u2019t alone! He\u2019s brought the reader with him to this ill-fated soir\u00e9e (and a knowing narrator to nudge things along).
\nWith the reader in the driver\u2019s seat of Lenny\u2019s decisions through a choose your own story format, the ruthless among us can keep him perched on the brink of destruction, determined to sabotage his own best interests and blithely oblivious to his fate. The more tenderhearted, on the other hand, can spare themselves the extended will he \/ won\u2019t he tension and jump right to the escape plan. It\u2019s a clever recipe for a deviously twisted lobster stew of a tale.
\nBut Lenny shouldn\u2019t feel too bad about falling into this (pretty obvious) trap. In truth, the annals of children\u2019s literature are littered with foolish souls destined to slip down the gullets of whales and foxes and\u00a0spiders. Personally I love the black humor and endless vegetable massacres of Matthieu Sylvander’s\u00a0The Battle of the Vegetables,\u00a0<\/em>although sometimes it’s fun to watch adversaries who are more evenly matched, as in the frenzied power struggle in Taro Gomi’s The Crocodile and the Dentist. <\/em>And\u00a0of course, it\u2019s not only the victims with stories to tell.\u00a0From the subtle “who me?” insouciance of Jon Klassen\u2019s vengeful hat-seeking bear to the sweet (toothless) malice of the baby crocodile in I’d Really Like to Eat a Child\u00a0<\/em>to the charming confessions of\u00a0A. Wolf in The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!<\/em>,\u00a0a wily predator can prove awfully hard to resist.
\nWhat\u2019s the moral of all this, you ask? I don\u2019t know. But if you ever find yourself in a children’s book, my advice is to keep your wits about you, don’t try on any pots or ovens for size, and watch for the gleam of sharp white teeth.
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