MY HUMONGOUS HAMSTER

What happens when a hamster eats his whole bowl of food in one gulp?

“If he does that,” muses the narrator, “he will get BIGGER and BIGGER. / Then he will be… / … HUMONGOUS!” Through the magic of photo collage, the narrator’s cute, tiny hamster is now as tall as the ceiling. He moves outdoors, where he grows more. Readers see the Godzilla-sized hamster “eat trees like broccoli” and rest his furry paws atop a skyscraper. With a ladder leaning on his hindquarters, a group of children have scrambled up for a ride. “He could give me and my friends a ride to the park.” Or, the narrator continues, the hamster might become a superhero—and the hamster grabs a robber by the leg with a police car waiting nearby. With accompanying illustrations, the narrator realizes that a creature so big would be scary to the family’s cat. Next, in a close-up, the hamster is looking straight out with dark, menacing eyes: “In fact, I think I’d find him scary myself, especially if he got ANGRY.” Unfortunately, the story provides no comforting resolution, going on sans segue to show where the hamster might sleep outdoors.

One little flaw in a story with a big, irresistible pet.