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BEASTLY BANQUET by Peggy Munsterberg

BEASTLY BANQUET

by Peggy Munsterberg & illustrated by Tracy Gallup

Pub Date: Jan. 1st, 1997
ISBN: 0-8037-1481-5
Publisher: Dial Books

A poetic take on a popular subject: what animals like to eat. Short, rhymed verse in simple couplets, triplets, and quatrains describes the eating habits of such animals as swans, bats, whales, gulls, and moles. The objects of each animal's appetite are made to sound as tasty as human delicacies, from juicy slugs to fat flies. The occasionally instructional, often droll poems provide a brief glimpse of the food chain in nature. Gouache and watercolor illustrations are a curious mixture of realistic scenes in nature and anthropomorphized creatures in dresses, ties, and formal attire: Spider has a human face, sleeps on a hammock, and hangs her tiny dresses from a clothesline strung in the bend of a lamp. The more fanciful compositions provide constant jocular juxtaposition with eaters of the human realm, and demonstrate wit and whim unfortunately absent from other scenes. (Picture book. 5+)