I’m Hungry!

We all know what it's like to be "hangry", that petulant, urgent mood that can only be soothed with a yummy snack or well-rounded meal. Many an adult also knows what it's like to deal with a hangry child demanding a particular snack NOW!. But what if that child never feels full no matter how much they nosh? With this board book, Elise Gravel pokes fun of the perpetually hungry. Her scarlet-hued monster, shaped like a squat cherry tomato with tri-petaled ears and stick figure appendages, is in a state of perpetual hunger. It fixes an unwavering, blank stare at the edible world around it. All the world's a menu for this creature, and the reader joins in on its crash course in serial consumption.

Standing against a completely blank background, Gravel's odd monster declares, "I'm hungry. What can I eat?", on the verso of each spread in the board book. With pared-down cartoony artwork, bubble letters in different colours to emphasize the words “hungry” and each object that the monster eats, Gravel underscores the absurdity of the monster’s cravings with disregard to scale to great comic effect. Like Eric Carle's very hungry caterpillar, the monster needs a constant supply of sustenance. Unlike the very hungry caterpillar, however, the rotund creature does not transform into a beautiful butterfly at the story's end, even as its meals become increasingly absurd in proportion (and portion size). Beginning with a wedge of pizza, the monster dispatches, in quick succession, the plate, the pizza box, the trash can, the chair, the toilet, the table, and the fridge, until it eats itself literally out of house and home.

Not at all satisfied, our monster fixes its gaze on the world outside its immediate environs: "I'm still hungry. What can I eat?" it asks, and proceeds to eat a school building, followed by a mountain, perhaps as a palate cleanser from institutional dryness. Dyspepsia and indigestion are foreign concepts to the monster who finally notices a child observing its feeding frenzy. "Why, there is a child looking at me," the monster thinks to itself. "Hey you!" it says. "I will eat you!" This break from its constant refrain signals a visual break from the expected pattern of the reader seeing the monster tip food into its maw. Now, its cavernous mouth, populated by sparse stubby teeth, takes over most of the page. Turning the page, readers would be horrified and delighted by an even closer-up view of the monster's mouth, indicating they are being swallowed whole!

Of course, ingesting a child leads the monster to succumb to a gastrointestinal disturbance. In its throes, he winces and cries: "BLECH! PTOOEY BLARGHHH YUCK! EWEW.” After it recovers, it ends the story with deadpan resignation: "That was NOT very GOOD!" Expecting a denouement of sorts, I found the ending's abruptness unsatisfying. It left me, like the monster through much of the tale, wanting more: will it take an indefinite break from scarfing? Learn to eat more mindfully? Become a vegan? Nevertheless, this simple and silly story will likely endure many an encore reading to its audience (and withstand nibbling on its corners).

Nearly a perfect read, I’m Hungry! allows for the youngest of readers to participate in the story's refrain, guess what the chronic eater will gobble next, share in appalled fascination at the creature's appetites, and join in extemporaneous musings on its next adventure.