MORE PIES!

A rather lackluster story about the bottomless pit that is one boy’s stomach, gains some momentum from Martchenko’s (Makeup Mess, not reviewed, etc.) hoppin’ watercolors. Samuel woke up hungry, really hungry. He has already made significant headway through his pillow, while he was asleep. His mother plies him with cereal and stacks of pancakes and more pancakes and more cereal and a roasted chicken. But Samuel’s demand for seven roasted chickens pulls her up short. No more food until lunchtime, she declares. Samuel heads for the backyard to gnash and wail and cry starvation until his brother alerts him to a pie-eating contest at the park. (Martchenko does a nice job of calling up what looks like Vancouver, British Columbia.) Hardly surprising, Samuel eats a lumberjack, a fireman, and a construction worker under the table, before returning home to a pie his mother had made for his lunch, whereupon, also unsurprisingly, Samuel gets a little green around the gills and slumps to the floor. Enter his younger brother, ready to take on all comers. No twist is tendered to give this old tale some new tension, so the story serves only as Muzak to Martchenko’s sight gags, burly chowhounds, and a boy whose stomach was always bigger than his eyes. (Picture book 3-6)