NIGHT OF THE VEGGIE MONSTER

McClements takes a distinctly parental point of view in portraying a young veggie-hater’s nightly dinner-table performance. “Time for another fun-filled hour,” observes Dad grimly, setting down a plate holding three seemingly boulder-sized peas in front of the hyper-dramatic lad who narrates. One touch of pea to tongue is all it takes to elicit writhing fingers (“Ahh . . . I knew it would start with the fingers”), curling toes (“That’s a new one!”) and twitches that are violent enough to knock over the chair as the child is transformed into . . . “a veggie monster!” Peas choked down at last, the crisis ends—but, of course, there’s always tomorrow’s broccoli. Created with a mix of clipped photo-bits of food and utensils and figures cut from brown paper, the illustrations have a simple look that goes with the pared-down text, the perspectives and dramatic effect reminiscent of Mo Willems’s Pigeon books, but it doesn’t really capture the drama like Lauren Child’s I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato (2000). Still, it may help similarly picky children, and their caregivers, get over taking themselves too seriously. (Picture book. 6-8)