SPIDER SANDWICHES
by Claire Freedman ; illustrated by Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet
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)