GUSTAV THE GOURMET GIANT

Just as Ungerer's Zeralda (1967) was bound to tame her child-eating ogre by cooking him gourmet foods and marrying him in the end, her male counterpart here must risk himself to save the lamb appropriated by another voracious giant, and then go on to kill the giant and return home to his mother's arms. The archetypal victory is accomplished with a dish of poisoned mushrooms, which the boy has recommended as the best accompaniment to ""boy"", a dish he tells the giant is better than lamb and for which he has volunteered himself. Conveniently, the giant takes long enough to die for his intended victim (whom he's been fattening for weeks) to climb up on the table and announce that ""No one eats boy. Not even gourmet giants."" Fair(and reassuring) enough, though Gaeddert's plotting strikes us as more contrived than compelling. Kellogg of course can't miss, as he always seems to be depicting gluttony whatever the subject, but he doesn't take this chance to make his readers as well as his characters drool.