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Amy Krouse Rosenthal, best known for her grown-up memoirs like Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, The Mother's Guide to the Meaning of Life and The Same Phrase Describes My Marriage & My Breasts, jumps into the
beginning reader-aged picture book fray and comes out on top with Little Pea.
A delightful twist on the finicky-kid eat-the-good-for-you-food-first mealtime battle most parents (and kids) have fought at one point or another,
Little Pea introduces us to a tiny legume and his parents, a family as familiar as a child's own - Little Pea likes hanging out with his pea pals, hearing bedtime stories from Mama Pea, playing rough with Papa Pea at the end of the day (Papa Pea would fling Little Pea off a spoon high into the air, and Little Pea would scream, "Again! Again!").
But for all the wonderful things Little Pea loves, he dreads dinnertime. It's always the same thing: CANDY! Every day of the week - red candy on Monday, orange candy on Tuesday, yellow and purple and pink polka-dotted and striped and swirly and rainbow - that's what you have to eat when you're a pea.
"If you want to grow up to be a big, strong pea, you have to eat your candy," Papa Pea tells him. "If you don't finish your candy then you can't have dessert," Mama Pea tells him. Together they get him to agree to five pieces - then he can have dessert. And what's for dessert is the most delicious surprise of the book - suffice it to say that it is pretty much the antithesis of candy - and Little Pea loves it.
Kids will love Little Pea's countdown to dessert, filled with yucks and blechs and plehs, and they will giggle at the backward nature of what he loves to eat and what he doesn't. Jen Corace's simple, joyful ink and watercolor illustrations complement the story marvelously, helping make Rosenthal's maiden picture-book outing a fun, fun read for both parents and their finicky kids.
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Little Pea