Spider Sandwiches

June 15, 2014
Freedman climbs aboard an already overcrowded bandwagon with this catalog of gross-out goodies in Max the monster's larder.With characteristic disregard for exact rhymes or rhythm, the author lays out arrays of stomach-churning delicacies, from the titular sandwiches to "toenail scrambled eggs" and pickled worms: "He LOVES to glug slug milkshakes, / through a stinky hosepipe straw. / And as for beetle cookies- / he can ALWAYS munch one more!" In illustrations teeming with creepy crawlies, unidentifiable globs and grocery items like "Mice Krispies," Max, a hairball tinted yellow-green and equipped with bicycle-horn ears, chows down with googly-eyed exuberance-until a final dish of Brussels sprouts sends him (as it does so many readers) shrieking from the room.No more than a side dish next to the appetite-killing courses dished out by Shel Silverstein, by Adam Rex in Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (2006) and by so many others. (Picture book. 6-8)

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June 1, 2014

PreS-Gr 1-Max the monster has an appetite for anything gloopy, gunky, and gross. He starts his day with toenail scrambled eggs and a crushed-grasshopper-legs smoothie, and for lunch he eats multicolored lice rice. He cooks slimed-eel noodles from Squealia's Monsters' Cookbook and buys treats like rat's-tail pizza and blue-mold chips at the grocery store. Squiggly spider sandwiches are his favorite. The only thing the seeming omnivore emphatically turns down is...green sprout soup. Although the rhyming pattern isn't consistent throughout, on most of the pages, the second and fourth line rhyme. Hendra and Linnet's digital illustrations and glittery cover offset the story's gross-out factor. The monster and bugs are cute. Teeth are rounded and eyes are wide open. A humorous introduction to eating habits and preferences.-Tanya Boudreau, Cold Lake Public Library, AB, Canada

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
Max is a young monster with an appetite for gross foods, especially spider sandwiches. But even this adventurous eater won't touch Brussels sprouts. Colorful Photoshop illustrations set off by black backgrounds and a laundry list of disgusting dishes will please a young audience, but an unsteady rhyme scheme and the tired anti-vegetable joke flatten the effect.

(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)