BADGER’S FANCY MEAL

Badger can’t look another offering from storage bin or root cellar in the eye, let alone stomach the worms that crawl all over them. Said eye turns, as the eyes of badgers do, on his neighbors. Kasza knows his Badger—that baby face hides a grizzled personality, long of tooth and claw, beholden to none, disposed like a jumped rhino—and that he would be happy to turn a mouse into a taco, or a rat into a cheeseburger, or a rabbit into—why not?—a banana split. But each makes a fast getaway, zipping down the same convenient hole in the ground. In a clever design, as Badger loses his grip on his victim, the page looks as though it’s peeling back to show how each lands in Badger’s burrow. Badger meets his match in Horse, who kicks him all the way home, from which Mouse, Rat and Rabbit have just departed, after reducing Badger’s larder to zero. They did, however, leave a thank-you note for the “fancy meal.” A quick, comic yet enjoyably unexpurgated story about just deserts. (Picture book. 4-7)