Genre: Monsters / Humor / Food / Manners
Year Published: 1994
Year Read: 2010
At this point, I had almost read every book written by Henrik Drescher and almost every one of them was brilliantly unique and creative to look at! “The Boy Who Ate Around” is clearly one silly and creative book from the creative mind of Henrik Drescher that I just had to check out and this is definitely a story that most children do not want to miss!
When a young boy named Mo refuses to eat his dinner which is lizard guts and bullfrog heads (actually it is really string beans and cheese soufflé), he ends up eating AROUND his dinner and ends up eating everything including his math teacher and his parents, leaving his string beans and cheese soufflé untouched!
Alright, so the moment that you see the cover of this book of a crazed Pinocchio look-alike boy looking at his dinner with a crazed look on his face and you have four bizarre looking monsters surrounding the boy; you know that you are in for a wild ride! Henrik Drescher has done a brilliant job at both writing and illustrating this book as this is easily one of the most surreal books I have ever read! Henrik Drescher’s writing is full of oddity and creativity as the story about how a boy starts eating around his dinner by turning into random monsters was seriously bizarre to read about! What I always loved about Henrik Drescher’s works is that he brings so much creativity to his work that I am always finding myself being so interested in what story he comes up with next. This story was quite unusual since it is not everyday I read a story about a young boy turning into a monster to eat around his dinner, but it was really interesting to see how Mo handles not being able to eat his dinner and finding an odd solution to his problem. Henrik Drescher’s illustrations are truly creative as the monsters that Mo turns into are truly creative to look at, especially the image of the green warthog monster that is completely green and has large bulging eyes.
The reason why I gave this book a four star rating is because while the illustrations were creative and colorful, they are a bit too chaotic as they are all over the page. Also, some of the illustrations might be a bit too creepy for smaller children since there are many monsters in this book and the monster that would probably creep out children the most would be of the image of the bug-eyed slime slusher that has many eyes all over its body.
Overall, “The Boy Who Ate Around” is a great book for children who love reading about monsters and love surreal storylines. However, I would recommend this book to children ages six and up since some of the imagery is a bit too scary for smaller children.
Review is also on: Rabbit Ears Book Blog
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