BROCCOLI IS TRYING TO KILL ME

A kid faces a picky eater’s ultimate nemesis: a refrigerator’s worth of vegetables.

“‘Broccoli is good for you,’ my dad says. But I know the truth. Broccoli is trying to kill me.” The kid has it figured out: “I’m pretty sure Broccoli leads meetings inside the dark, cold fridge.” What’s more, “When I open the fridge to get some milk, I know they’re watching me.” When Dad announces that dinner will be mac and cheese, the narrator is delighted—“There’s no Broccoli in that”—but the joy is short-lived. “While I celebrate, the vegetables begin their attack!” Readers will know that this is headed for a face-off, but they may not anticipate the narrator’s built-in secret weapon: “CHOMP!” It’s all quite entertaining, with springy alliterative turns (“The tomatoes tiptoe toward the toaster”). The title should be a tip-off that this story—Evans’ picture-book debut—isn’t for little ones, who may nevertheless be drawn to Allen’s bold and kinetic digital art in fierce colors perfectly suited to adversarial produce with menacing expressions. Indeed, the central joke (a spoof of the paranoid mindset) is for a slightly older crowd and, of course, for any adult who has ever been tasked with feeding a vegetable-avoidant child. Both the father and the child narrator have brown skin and dark hair.

A funny finicky-eater fantasy.